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ESSAYS ON 
EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS 



BY 

ROBERT HEBERT QUICK 

M. A. TRIN. COLL., CAMBRIDGE 

FOK.V.ER!,Y ASSISTANT MASTER AT HARROW, AND LECTURER ON 

THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION AT CAMBRIDGE 

LATE VICAR OF SEDBERGH 



OMY AUrHORlZED EDITION OF THE WORK 
AS REWRITTEN IN iSoo 



NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1896 






Copyright, 1890, 
By D. APPLETON ANB COMPANY. 

Gift from 
Mrs. Ed war b N. Dlnglay 

Jury 11 1932 



To 

DR. HENRY BARNARD, 

The first United States Co7mnissioner of Education, 

WHO IN A LONG LIFE OF 

SELF-SACRIFICING LABOUR HAS GIVEN TO THE ENGLISH 

LANGUAGE AN EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE, 

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED, 

WITH THE ESTEEM AND ADMIRATION OF 

THE AUTHOR. 



Ov yap t(TTt jrepi otov dciorepov avBpamos av dovKevaaiTo, ij Ttffii 
nM^eias Koi rav avTOV Kai rayv olKfiav. Plato in initio Thcagis 
(p. 122 B). 

Socrates saith plainlie, that " no man goeth about a more godlie 
purpose, than he that is mindfull of the good bringing up both of hys 
owne and other men's children." — Ascha77i^s Scholemaster. Preface. 

Futidamenfum totius reipiihlic(F est recta jiiventutis educatio. 
The very foundation of the whole commonwealth is the proper 
bringing up of the young. — Cic. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



Many years ago I proposed to my friend Mr. Quick 
to rewrite his Educational Reformers, making some addi- 
tions (Sturm and Froebel,'for example), and allow me to 
place it in this series of educational works. I had read 
his essays when they first appeared, and noted their great 
value as a contribution to the right kind of educational 
literature. They showed admirable tact in the selection 
of the materials ; the " epoch-making " writers were chosen 
and the things that had been said and done of permanent 
value were brought forward. Better than all was the run- 
ning commentary on these materials by Mr. Quick him- 
self. His style was popular, taking the reader, as it were, 
into confidential relations with him from the start, and 
offering now and then a word of criticism in the most 
judicial spirit, leaning neither to the extreme of destruc- 
tive radicalism, which seeks revolution rather than reform, 
nor, on the other hand, to the extreme of blind conserva- 
tism, which wishes to preserve the vesture of the past 
rather than its wisdom. 

I have called this book of Mr. Quick the most valu- 
able history of education in our mother-tongue, fit only 
to be compared with Karl von Raumer's Geschichte der 
Padagogik for its presentation of essentials and for the 
sanity of its verdicts. 



Vlli EDITOR S PREFACE. 

I made my proposal that he " rewrite " his book be- 
cause I knew that he considered his first edition hastily 
written and, in many respects, not adequate to the ideal 
he had conceived of the book. I knew, moreover, that 
years of continued thinking on a theme necessarily modi- 
fies one's views. He would wish to make some changes 
in matter presented, some in judgments rendered, and 
many more in style of presentation. 

Hence it has come about that after this lapse of time 
Mr. Quick has produced a substantially new book, which, 
retaining all or nearly all of the admirable features of the 
first edition, has brought up to their standard of excellence 
many others. 

The history of education is a vast field, and we are 
accustomed to demand bulky treatises as the only ade- 
quate ones. But the obvious disadvantage of such works 
has led to the clearly defined ideal of a book like Mr. 
Quick's, which separates the gold from the dross, and 
offers it small in bulk but precious in value. 

The educational reformers are the men above all others 
who stimulate us to think about education. Every one 
of these was an extremist, and erred in his judgment as 
to the value of the methods which prevailed in his time, 
and also overestimated the effects of the new education 
that he proposed in the place of the old. But thought 
begins with negations, and originality shows itself first 
not in creating something new, but in removing the fetter- 
ing limitations of its existing environment. The old is 
attacked— its good and its bad are condemned alike. It 
has been imposed on us by authority, and we have not 
been allowed to summon it before the bar of our reason 
and ask of it its credentials. It informs us that it pre- 
sented these credentials ages ago to our ancestors — men 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. IX 

older and wiser than we are. Such imposition of author- 
ity leaves us no choice but to revolt. We, too, have a 
right to think as well as our ancestors ; we, too, must clear 
up the ground of our belief and substitute insight for blind 
faith in tradition. 

These educational reformers are prophets of the clear- 
ing-up period {Aufkldrung) of revolution against mere 
authority. 

While we are inspired to think for ourselves, however, 
we must not neglect that more important matter of think- 
ing the truth. Free thinking, if it does not reach the 
truth, is not of great value. It sets itself as puny indi- 
vidual against the might of the race, which preserves its 
experience in the forms of institutions — the family, the 
social organism, the state, the Church. 

Hence our wiser and more scientific method studies 
everything that is, or exists, in its history, and endeavors 
to discover how it came to be what it is. It inquires into 
its evolution. The essential truth is not the present fact, 
but the entire process by which the present fact grew to 
be what it is. For the living force that made the present 
fact made also the past facts antecedent to the present, 
and it will go on making subsequent facts. The revela- 
tion of the living forces which make the facts of exist- 
ence is the object of science. It takes all these facts to 
reveal the living force that is acting and producing them. 

Hence the scientific attitude is superior to the attitude 
of these educational reformers, and we shall in our own 
minds weigh these men in our scales, asking first of all : 
What is their view of the world } How much do they 
value human institutions? How much do they know of 
the substantial good that is wrought by those institutions ? 
If they know nothing of these things, if they see only in- 



X EDITOR S PREFACE. 

cumbrance in these institutions, if to them the individual 
is the measure of all things, we can not do reverence to 
their proposed remedies, but must account their value to 
us chiefly this, that they have stimulated us to thinking, 
and helped us to discover what they have not discovered 
— namely, the positive value of institutions. 

All education deals with the boundary between igno- 
rance and knowledge and between bad habits and good 
ones. The pupil as pupil brings with him the ignorance 
and the bad habits, and is engaged in acquiring good 
habits and correct knowledge. 

This situation gives us a general recipe for a frequently 
recurring type of educational reformer. Any would-be 
reformer may take his stand on the boundary mentioned, 
and, casting an angry look at the realm of ignorance and 
bad habit not yet conquered, condemn in wholesale terms 
the system of education that has not been efficient in re- 
moving this mental and moral darkness. 

Such a reformer selects an examination paper written 
by a pupil whose ignorance is not yet vanquished, and 
parades the same as a product of the work of the school, 
taking great pains to avoid an accurate and just admeas- 
urement of the actual work done by the school. The 
reformer critic assumes that there is one factor here, 
whereas there are three factors — namely, (a) the pupil's 
native and acquired powers of learning, (3) his actual 
knowledge acquired, and {c) the instruction given by the 
school. The school is not responsible for the first and 
second of these factors, but it is responsible only for what 
increment has grown under its tutelage. How much and 
what has the pupil increased his knowledge, and how 
much his power of acquiring knowledge and of doing? 

The educational reformer is always telling us to leave 



EDITOR S PREFACE. XI 

words and take up things. He dissuades from the study 
of language, and also undervalues the knowledge of man- 
ners and customs and laws and usages. He dislikes the 
study of institutions even. He " loves Nature," as he in- 
forms us. Herbert Spencer wants us to study the body, 
and to be more interested in biology than in formal logic ; 
more interested in natural history than in literature. But 
I think he would be indignant if one were to ask him 
whether he thought the study of the habits and social in- 
stincts of bees and ants is less important than the study 
of insect anatomy and physiology. Anatomy and physi- 
ology are, of course, important, but the social organism is 
more important than the physiological organism, even in 
bees and ants. 

So in man the social organism is transcendent as com- 
pared with human physiology, and social hygiene com- 
pared with physiological hygiene is supreme. 

To suppose that the habits of plants and insects are 
facts, and that the structure of human languages, the logi- 
cal structure of the mind itself as revealed in the figures 
and modes of the syllogism and the manners and customs 
of social life, the deep ethical principles which govern 
peoples as revealed in works of literature — to suppose 
that these and the like of these are not real facts and 
worthy of study is one of the strangest delusions that has 
ever prevailed. 

But it is a worse delusion to suppose that the study of 
Nature is more practical than the study of man, though 
this is often enough claimed by the educational reformers. 

The knowledge of most worth is first and foremost the 
knowledge of how to behave — a knowledge of social cus- 
toms and usages. Any person totally ignorant in this 
regard would not escape imprisonment — perhaps I should 



Xll EDITOR S PREFACE. 

say decapitation — for one day in any city of the world — 
say in London, in Pekin, in Timbuctoo, or in 2,pueblo of 
Arizona. A knowledge of human customs and usages, 
next a knowledge of human views of Nature and man — 
these are of primordial necessity to an individual, and are 
means of direct self-preservation. 

The old trivium or threefold course of study at the 
university taught grammar, logic, and rhetoric — namely, 
(i) the structure of language, (2) the structure of mind 
and the art of reasoning, (3) the principles and art of per- 
suasion. These may be seen at once to be lofty subjects 
and worthy objects of science. They will always remain 
such, but they are not easy for the child. In the course 
of mastering them he must learn to master himself and 
gain great intellectual stature. Pedagogy has wisely 
graded the road to these heights, and placed much easier 
studies at the beginning and also made the studies more 
various. Improvements in methods and in grading — de- 
vices for interesting the pupil — so essential to his self- 
activity, for these we have to thank the Educational Re- 
formers. 

W. T. Harris. 

Washington, D. C, 1890. 



PREFACE TO EDITION OF 1868. 



" // is clear that in whatever it is our duty to act, thosi 
matters also it is our duty to study" These words of Dr. 
Arnold's seem to me incontrovertible. So a sense of duty, 
as well as fondness for the subject, has led me to devote a 
period of leisure to the study of Education, in the practice 
of which I have been for some years engaged. 

There are countries where it would be considered a truism 
that a teacher in order to exercise his profession intelligently 
should know something about the chief authorities in it. 
Here, however, I suppose such an assertion will seem para- 
doxical ; but there is a good deal to be said in defence of 
it. De Quincey has pointed out that a man who takes up 
any pursuit without knowing what advances others have 
made, in it works at a great disadvantage. He does not 
apply his strength in the right direction, he troubles him- 
self about small matters and neglects great, he falls into 
errors that have long since been exploded. An educator 
is, I think, liable to these dangers if he brings to his task 
no knowledge but that which he learnt for the tripos, and 
no skill but that which he acquired in the cricket ground or 
on the river. If his pupils are placed entirely in his hands, 
his work is one of great difficulty, with heavy penalties at- 
tached to all blundering in it ; though here, as in the case 



XIV PREFACE. 

of ihe ignorant doctor and the careless architect, the 
penalties, unfortunately, are paid by his victims. If (as 
more commonly happens) he has simply to give a class pre- 
scribed instruction, his smaller scope of action limits 
proportionally the mischief that may ensue ; but even then 
it is obviously desirable that his teaching should be as good 
as possible, and he is not likely to employ the best methods 
if he invents as he goes along, or simply falls back on his 
remembrance of how he was taught himself, perhaps in very 
different circumstances. I venture to think, therefore, that 
practical men in education, as in most other things, may 
derive benefit from the knowledge of what has already been 
said and done by the leading men engaged in it, both past 
and present. 

All study of this kind, however, is very much impeded by 
want of books. " Good books are in German," says Professor 
Seeley. I have found that on the history of Education, not 
only good books but all books are in German or some other 
foreign language.* I have, therefore, thought it worth while 
to publish a few such imperfect sketches as these, with which 



• When the greater part of this volume was already written, Mr. 
Parker published his sketch of the history of Classical Education ^Essays 
on a Liberal Education, edited by Farrar). He seems to me fo have 
been very successful in bringing out the most important features of his 
subject, but his essay necessarily shows marks of over-compression. 
Two volumes have also lately appeared on Christian Schools and 
Scholars (Longmans, 1S67). Here we have a good deal of information 
which we want, and also, it seems to me, a good deal which we do not 
want. The work characteristically opens with a loth century description 
of the personal appearance of St. Mark when he landed at Alexandria. 
The author treats only of the times which preceded the Council of Trent. 
A very interesting account of early English education has been given by 
Mr. Furnivall, in the 2nd and 3rd numbers of the Quarterly Journal oj 
Education (1867). [I did not then know of Dr. Barnard's works.] 



PREFACE. XV 

the reader can hardly be less satisfied than the author. 
They may, however, prove useful till they give place to a 
t>etter book. 

Several of the following essays are nothing more than 
compilations. Indeed, a hostile critic might assert that I had 
used the scissors with the energy of Mr. Timbs and without 
his discretion. The reader, however, will probably agree 
with me that I have done wisely in putting before him the 
opinions of great writers in their own language. Where I 
am simply acting as reporter, the author's own way of ex- 
pressing himself is obviously the best ; and if, following the 
example of the gipsies and Sir Fretful Plagiary, I had dis- 
figured other people's offspring to make them pass for my 
own^ success would have been fatal to the purpose I have 
steadily kept in view. The sources of original ideas in any 
subject, as the student is well aware, are few, but for irriga- 
tion we require troughs as well as water-springs, and these 
essaj's are intended to serve in the humbler capacity. 

A word about the incomplete handling of my subjects. I 
have not attempted to treat any subject completely, or even 
with anything like completeness. In giving a sketch of the 
opinions of an author one of two methods must be adopted ; 
we may give an epitome of all that he has said, or by con- 
fining ourselves to his more valuable and characteristic 
opinions, may gain space to give these fully. As I detest 
epitomes, I have adopted the latter method exclusively, but 
I may sometimes have failed in selecting an author's most 
characteristic principles ; and probably no two readers of a 
book would entirely agree as to what was most valuable in 
it : so my account must remain, after all, but a poor substi- 
tute for the author himself. 

For the part of a critic I have at least one qualification — 
practical acquaintance with the subject. As boy or master, 



XVI PREFACE. 

I have been connected with no less than eleven schools, 
and my perception of the blunders of other teachers is 
derived mainly from the remembrance of my own. Some 
of my mistakes have been brought home to me by reading 
works on education, even those with which I do not in the 
main agree. Perhaps there are teachers who on looking 
through the following pages may meet with a similar ex 
perience. 

Had the essays been written in the order in which they 
stand, a good deal of repetition might have been avoided, 
but this repetition has at least the advantage of bringing out 
points which seem to me important ; and as no one will 
read the book as carefully as I have done, I hope no one 
will be so much alive to this and other blemishes in it. 

I much regret that in a work which is nothing if it is not 
practically useful, I have so often neglected to mark the 
exact place from which quotations are taken. I have myself 
paid the penally of this carelessness in the trouble it has 
cost me to verify passages which seemed inaccurate. 

The authority I have had recourse to most frequently is 
Raumer {fieschichte der Pddagogik). In his first two volumes 
he gives an account of the chief men connected with educa- 
tion, from Dante to Pestalozzi. The third volume con- 
tains essays on various parts of education, and the fourth is 
devoted to German Universities. There is an English 
translation, published in America, of the fourth volume 
only. I confess to a great partiality for Raumer — a par 
tiality which is not shared by a Saturday Reviewer and 
by other competent authorities in this country. But surely 
a German author who is not profound, and is almost per- 
spicuous, has some claim on the gratitude of English readers, 
if he gives information which we cannot get in our own 
language. To Raumer I am indebted for all that I have 



PREFACE. XVH 

written about Ratke, and almost all about Basedow. Else- 
wliere his history has been used, though not to the same 
extent. 

C. A. Schmid's EncycJopddie des Erziehungs-und-Unter- 
riihtswesens is a vast mine of information on everything 
connected with education. The work is still in progress. 
The part containing Rousseau has only just reached me. I 
should have been glad of it when I was giving an account 
of the Emile, as Raumer was of little use to me. 

Those for whom Schmid is too diffuse and expensive will 
find Carl Gottlob Hergang's Pddagogische Reah7icydopddie 
useful. This is in two thick volumes, and costs, to the best 
of my memory, about eighteen shillings. It was finished in 

1847. 

The best sketch I have met with of the general history of 
education is in the article on Pddagogik in Meyers Conversa- 
tions-Lexicon* I wish someone would translate this article ; 
and I should be glad to draw the attention of the editor of 
an educational periodical, say the Museum or the Quarterly 
Journal of Education^ to it. 

I have come upon references to many other works on the 
history of Education, but of these the only ones 1 have seen 
are Theodore Fritz's Esquisse d'un Systtme complet d'instruc- 
tion et d' education et de leur histoire (3 vols., Strasburg, 1843), 
and Carl Schmidt's Geschichte der Pddagogik (4 vols.). The 
first of these gives only the outline of the subject. The 
second is, I believe, considered a standard work. It does 
not seem to me so readable as Raumer's history, but it is 
much more complete, and comes down to quite recent 
times. 

For my account of the Jesuit schools and of Pestalozzi, 

• This article is omitted in the last edition. 



-^Vlll PREFACE. 

the authorities will be found elsewhere (pp. 34 and 383). 
In writing about Comenius I have had much assistance from 
a life of him prefixed to an English translation of his School 
of Infancy, by Daniel Benham (London, 1858). For almost 
all the information given about Jacotot, I am indebted to 
Mr. Payne's papers, which J should not have ventured to 
extract from so freely if they had been before the public in 
a more permanent form. 

I am sorry I cannot refer to any English works on the 
history of Education, except the essays of Mr. Parker and 
Mr. Furnivall, and Christian Schools and Scholars, which are 
mentioned above, but we have a very good treatise on the 
principles of education in Marcel's Latiguage as a Means of 
Mental Culture (2 vols., London, 1853). Edgeworth's 
Practical Education seems falling into undeserved neglect, 
and Mr. Spencer's recent work is not universally known 
even by schoolmasters. 

If the following pages attract but few readers, it will be 
some consolation, though rather a melancholy one, that I 
share the fate of my betters. 

R. H. Q. 

Ingatestone, Essex, May, 1S68. 



PREFACE TO EDITION OF 1890. 

When I was a young man (z. e., nearly forty years ago), I 
once did what those who know the ground would declare 
a very risky, indeed, a fool-hardy thing. I was at the 
highest point of the Gemmi Pass in Switzerland, above the 



PREFACE. XIX 

Rhone Valley ; and being in a hurry to get down and 
overtake my party I ran from the top to the bottom. The 
path in those days was not so good as it is now, and it is so 
near the precipice that a few years afterwards a lady in 
descending lost her head and fell over. No doubt I was 
in great danger of a drop of a thousand feet or so. But of 
tais I was totally unconscious. I was in a thick mist, and 
saw the path for a few yards in front of me and nothing fnore. 
When I think of the way in which this book was written three 
and twenty years ago I can compare it to nothing 'but my 
first descent of the Gemmi. I did a very risky thing without 
knowing it. My path came into view little by little as I went 
on. All else was hid from me by a thick mist of ignorance. 
When I began the book I knew next to nothing of the Re- 
formers, but I studied hard and wrote hard, and I turned out 
the essays within the year. This feat I now regard with amaze- 
ment, almost with horror. Since that time I have given 
more years of work to the subject than I had then given 
months, and the consequence is I find I can write fast no 
longer. The mist has in a measure cleared off, and I cannot 
jog along in comfort as I did when I saw less. At the same 
time I have no reason to repent of the adventure. Being 
fortunate in my plan and thoroughly interested by my 
subject, I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations in 
getting others to take an interest in it also. The small 
English edition of 500 copies was, as soon as I reduced the 
price, sold off immediately, and the book has been, in 
England, for twenty ) ears " out of print." But no less than 
three publishing firms in the United States have reprinted 
it (one quite recently) without my consent, and, except in 
the edition of Messrs. R. Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, with 
omissions and additions made without my knowledge. It 
seems then that the book will live for some years yet, 



XX PREFACE. 

whether I like it or not ; and while it lives I wish it to be 
in a form somewhat less defective than at its first appearance. 
I have therefore in a great measure re-written it, besides 
filling in a gap here and there with an additional essay. 
Perhaps some critics will call it a new book with an old 
title. If they do, they will I trust allow that the new book 
has at least two merits which went far to secure the success 
of the old, ist, a good title, and 2nd, a good plan. My 
plan in both editions has been to select a few people who 
seemed specially worth knowing about, and to tell con- 
cerning them in some detail just that which seemed to me 
specially worth knowing. So I have given what I thought 
very valuable or very interesting, and everything I thought 
not particularly valuable or interesting I have ruthlessly 
omitted. I have not attempted a complete account of any- 
body or anything ; and as for what the examiner may " set," 
I have not once given his questions a thought. 

As the book is Ukely to have more readers in the country 
of its adoption than m the country of its birth, I have per- 
suaded my friend Dr. William T. Harris, the United 
States Commissioner of Education, to put it into " The 
International Education Series " which he edits. So 
the only authorized editions of the book are the Eng- 
lish edition, and the American edition published by 
Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. 

R. II. Q. 
Earlswood Cottage, 
Redhill, Surrey, England, 
28th July, iSgo. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

Chapter I.— Effects of the Renascence .« .« .^ 1-21 

No escape from the Past ... ... ... ... ... 2 

" Discovery " of the Classics ... ... ... ... 3 

Mark Pattison's account of Renascence ... ... ... 4 

Revival of taste for beauty in Literature ... ... ... 5 

What is Literature ? ... ... ... ' ... ... ... 6 

Renascence loved beauty of expression ... ... ... 7 

No translations. The " educated " ... ... ... ... 8 

Spread of literature by printing ... ... ... ... 9 

School course settled before Bacon ... ... ... ... 10 

First defect : Learner above Doer... ... ... ... il 

Second: Over-estimate of literature ... ... ... ... 12 

Literary taste not common ... ... ... ... ... 13 

Third : Literature banished from school ... ... ... 14 

Translations would be literature ... ... ... ... 15 

The classics not written for children 16 

Language versus Literature.. ... ... ... ... 17 

Fourth : " Miss as good as a mile .« 18 

Fifth: Neglect of children 19 

Child's study of his surroundings 20 

Aut Caesar aut nihil ... ... ... ... ... ... 21 

Chapter IL — Renascence Tendencies ...22-26 

Reviving the Past. The Scholars ... ... .« ... 23 

The Sc/io/ars : things for words ... .„ ... ... 24 

Verbal Realists : things through words ... ... ... 25 

Stylists: words for themselves... ... ... ... ... 26 

Chapter IIL— Sturmius. (1507-1589) .., ... ... 27-32 

His early life. Settles in Strassburg ... .„ .„ ... 28 

His course of Latin. Dismissed 29 



xxu CONTENTS. 

Chapter III — continued. pack 

The Schoolmaster taught Latin mainly .„ .„ ... 30 

Resulting verbalism ... ... ... .., ... ... 31 

Some books about Sturm ... ... ... ... ... 32 

Chapter IV.— Schools of the Jesuits ... .^ ... 33-62 

Importance of the Jesuit Schools ... ... ... ... 34 

The Society in part educational ... ... ... ... 35 

" Ratio atque Institutio." Societas Professa... ,.., ... 36 

The Jesuit teacher : his preparation, &c. ... ... ,». 37 

Supervision. Maintenance. Lower Schools... ... ... 38 

Free instruction. Equality. Boarders ... ... ... 39 

Classes. Curriculum. Latin only used ... ... ... 40 

Teacher Lectured. Exercises. Saying by heart ... 41 

Emulation. ".(Em^li." Concertations 42 

"Academies." Expedients. School -hours ... .v. 43 

Method of teaching. An example ... ... ... ... 44 

Attention. Extra work. "Repetitio" ... ... ... 45 

Repetition. Thoroughness ... ... ... ... ... 46 

Yearly examinations. Moral training ... ... ... 47 

Care of health. Punishments ... ... ... ... ... 48 

- English want of system ... ... ... ... ... 49 

Jesuit limitations ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 50 

Gains from memorizing ... ... ... ... ... 51 

Popularity. Kindness ... ... ... ... ... ... 52 

Sympathy with each pupil ... ... ... ... ... 53 

Work moderate in amount and difficulty ... ... ... 54 

The Society the Army of the Church ... ... ... 55 

Their pedagogy not disinterested ... ... ... ... 56 

Practical ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 57 

The forces : i. Master's influence. 2. Emulation 57-58 

A pupil's summing-up ... ... ... ... ... 59 

Some books ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 60 

Barbier's advice to new master ... ... ... ... 61 

Loyola and Montaigne. Port-Royal ... ... 62 

Chapter V.— Rabelais. (1483-1553.) 63-69 

Rabelais' ideal. A new start ... ... ... ... ... 64 

Religion. Study of Things... ... ... ... ... 65 

" Anschauung. " Hand-work. Books and Life ... .» 66 



CONTENTS. xxiii 

Chapter V— continued. page 

Training the body .^ .^ .«. ... 67 

Rabelais' Curriculum 68 

Study of Scripture. Piety 69 

Chapter VI.— Montaigne. (i533-i592.) • ...7o-79 

Writers and doers. Montaigne versus Renascence .„. "]! 

Character before knowledge. True knowledge ... ... 72 

Athens and Sparta. Wisdom before knowledge ... ... 73 

Knowing, and knowing by heart 74 

Learning necessary as employment... ... ... ... 75 

Montaigae and our Public Schools ... ... ... ... 7^ 

Pressure from Science and Examinations .► 77 

Danger from knowledge 7^ 

Montaigne and Lord Armstrong 79 

Chapter Vn.—Ascham. (1515-1568.) 80-89 

Wolsey on teaching ... ... ... ... ... ... 81 

History of Methods useful .„ 82 

Our three celebrities 83 

Ascham's method for Latin : first stage ... ... ... 84 

Second stage. The six points ... ... ... .». 85 

Value of double translating and writing ... ... ... 86 

Study of a model book. Queen Elizabeth ... ... 87, 88 

" A dozen times at the least " ... ... ... ... ... 88 

" Impressionists " and " Retainers " ... ... «. 89 

Chapter VIII. — Mulcaster. (i53i(?)-i6ii.) ... .^ 90-102 

Old books in English on education ... ... ,♦, 91 

Mulcaster's wisdom hidden by his style 92 

Education and " learning " , ». 93 

I. Development. 2. Child-study ... ... ... ... 94 

3. Groundwork by best workman ... ... ... ... 95 

4. No forcing of young plants ... .„ 96 

5. The elementary course. English ... ... ... 97 

6. Girls as well as Boys ... ... ... ... ... 98 

7. Training of Teachers ... ... ... ... ... 99 

Training college at the Universities ... ... 100 

Mulcaster's reasons for training teachers ... ... ... loi 

Mulcaster's Life and Writings ... .» m. ... ... 103 



XXIV 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter IX.— Ratichius. (1571-1635.) 

Principles of the Innovators ... ... .« 

Ratke's Address to the Diet... .^ .. 

At Augsburg. At Koethen ... m. ... 

Failure at Koethen 

German in the school. Ratichius's services ... 
I. Follow Nature. 2. One thing at a time 

3. Over and over again ... 

4. Everything through the motber-tongue... 

5. Nothing on compulsion 

6. Nothing to be learnt by heart 

7. Uniformity. 8. Ne modus rei ante rem ... 

9. Per inductionem omnia 

Ratke's method for language 

Ratke's method and Ascham's 

Slow progress in methods ... 

Chapter X.— Comenius. (1592-1671,) ^ 

Early years. His first book 

Troubles. Exile 

Pedagogic studies at Leszna 

Didactic written. Janua published. Pansophy. 

Samuel Hartlib 

1\i^ Prodromus 7m^ Dilucidatio 

Comenius in London. Parliamentary schemes 
Comenius driven away by Civil War 
In Sweden. Interviews with Oxenstiem 
Oxenstiern criticises ... 

Comenius at Elbing 

At Leszna again 

Saros-Patak. Flight from Leszna 

Last years at Amsterdam 

Comenius sought true foundation 

Threefold life. Seeds of learning, virtue, piety 

Omnia sponte fluant. Analogies 

Analogies of growth ... ... ... ... 

Senses. Foster desire of knowledge 

No punishments. Words and Things together . 
Languages. System of schools... .«, .« 



CONTENTS. 



XXV 



Chapter X — continued. 

Mother-tongue School. Girls ... 
School teaching. Mother's teaching ... 
Ojmenius and the Kindergarten 

Starting-points of the sciences 

Beginnings in Geography, History, &c. . 
Drawing. Education for all 
Scientific and Religious Agreement 
Bishop Buller on Educating the Poor ... 
Comenius and Bacon 
" Everything Through the Senses " 
Error of Neglecting the Senses 
Insufficiency of the Senses ... ... 

Comenius undervalued the Past ... 

Literature and Science ... 

Comenius's use of Analogies 

Thought-studies and Label-studies 

Unity of Knowledges 

Theory and the Practical Man ... 

Mother-tongue. Words and Things together 

Janua Linguarum 

The Jesuits' Janua ... 

Comenius adapts Jesuits' Janua 

Anchoran's edition of Comenius's Janua . 

Change to be made by Janua ... 

Popularity of Janua shortlived 

Lubinus projector of Orbis Pictus ... 

Orbis Pictus described 

Why Comenius's schoolbooks failed ... 

" Compendia Dispendia " ... 

Comenius and Science of Education ... 

Books on Comenius ... 

Chaptet XI.— The Gentlemen of Port-Royal 

The Jesuits and the Arnaulds 

Saint-Cyran and Port-Royal ... 
Saint-Cyran an " Evangelical " .„ 
Shoi-t career of the Little Schools 
Saint-Cyran and Locke on Public Schools 
Shadow-side of Public Schools , 



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XXVI 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter XI — continued. 

The Little Schools for the few only «. « 

Advantages of great schools 

Choice of masters and servants. Watch and pray 

No rivalry or pressure. Freedom from routine 

Study a delight. Reading French first 

Literature. Mother-tongue first 

Beginners' difficulties lightened 

Begin with Latin into Mother- tongue ... 

Sense before sound. Reason must rule 

Not Baconian. The body despised 

Pedagogic writings of Port- Royalists 

Amauld. Nicole 

Light from within. Teach by the Senses 

Best teaching escapes common tests 

Stud}'ing impossible without a will... 

Against making beginnings bitter 

Port- Royal advance. Books on Port-Royal 

Rollin, Compayre, &c. ... 



Chapter XIL — Some English Writers before 
Birth of Realism 

Realist Leaders not schoolmasters ... 
John Brinsley. Charles Hoole... 
Hoole's Realism 

Art of teaching. Abraham Cowley 
Authors and schoolmasters. J. Dury 
Disorderly use of our natural faculties ... 

Dury's watch simile 

Senses, ist ; imagination, 2nd ; memory, 3rd 
Patty's battlefield simile 
Petty's realism 

Cultivate observation ... 

Petty on children's activities 

Iland-work. Education for all. Bellers... 

Milton and School-Reform 

Milton as spokesman of Christian Realists 

Language an instnnnent. Object of education 

Milton for barrack life and Verbal Realism 

Milton succeeded as man not master ... .« 



Locke 



CONTENTS. 



XXVll 



Chapter "Xll— continued. 

He did not advance Science of Education... 
Milton an educator of mankind ... -^ 

Chapter XIII. — Locke. (1632-1704.) 

Locke's two main characteristics 

1st, Truth for itself. 2nd, Reason for Truth 

Locke's definition of knowledge 

Knowing without seeing 

*' Discentem credere oporlet " ... 

Locke's " Knowledge " and the schoolmaster's 

" Ivnowledge " in Geography ... 

For children, health and habits 

Everything educative forms habits 

Confusion about special cases. Wax 

Locke behind Comenius... 

Humanists, Realists, and Trainers... 

Caution against classifiers 

Locke and development 

Was Locke a utilitarian ? 

Utilitarianism defined 

Locke not utilitarian in education 

Locke's Pisgah Vision 

Science and education. Names of books 

Chapter XIV. — Jean- Jacques Rousseau. (1712 
Middle Age system fell in i8th century 

Do the opposite to the usual 

Family life. No education before reason 

Rousseau "neglects" essentials. Lose time 

Early education negative 

Childhood the sleep of reason 

Start from study of the child 

Rousseau's paradoxes un-English ... 

Man the corrupter. The three educations 

The aim, living thoroughly ... 

Cliildren not small men... 

Schoolmasters' contempt for childhood 

Schoolroom rubbish ... .^ ... ... 



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252 



xxvill CONTENTS. 

Chapter XW—contimied. 

Ideas before symbols... ... ... ... 

Right ideas for children ... ... ... 

Child -gardening. Child's activity ... 

No sitting still or reading 

Memory without books ... ... 

Use of the senses in childhood ... .►. 

Intellect based on the senses ... 

Cultivation of the senses... 

Music and drawing ... 

Drawing from objects. Morals 

Contradictory statements on morals 

The material world and the moral 

Shun over-directing ... 

Lessons out of school. Questioning. At 12. 

No book-learning. Study of nature 

Against didactic teaching 

Rousseau exaggerates about self-teaching ,.. 

Learn with effort .. . 

Hand-work. The " New Education " 

The Teacher's business ... 



Chapter XV.— Basedow and the Philanthropinum ... 273-289 

Basedow tries to mend religion and teaching... ... ... 274 

Reform needed. Subscription for " Elementary " ., 275 

A journey with Goethe ... ... ... ... ... ... 276 

Goethe on Basedow ... ... ... ... ... ... 277 

The Philanthropinum opened ... ... ... ... ... 278 

Basedow's " Elementary " and " Book of Method " ... 279 

Subjects to be taught ... ... ... ... ... ... 280 

French and Latin. Religion ... ... ... ... 281 

*' Fred's Journey to Dessau " ... ... ... ... ... 282 

At the Philanthropinum ... ... ... ... ... 283 

Methods in the Philanthropinum ... ... ... ... 284 

The Philanthropinum criticised ... ... ... ... 285 

Basedow's improvements in teaching children ... ... 286 

Basedow's successors ... ... ... ... ... 2S7 

Kant on the Philanthropinum ... ... ... 288 

Influence of Philanthropinists .^ 289 



CONTENTS. XXIX 

PAGE 

Chapter XVI.— Pestalozzi. (1746-1827.) ._ .^ 290-3S3 

His childhood and student-liie ... ... .... ... 291 

A Radical Student ... ... ... ... ... ... 292 

Turns farmer. Bluntschli's warning ... ... ... 293 

New ideas in farming. A ICve letter ... ... ... ... 294 

Resolutions. Buys land and marries ... ... ... 295 

Pestalozzi turns to education ... ... ... ... ... 296 

Neuhof filled with children ... ... ... ... ... 297 

Appeal for the new Institution ... ... ... ... ... 298 

Bankruptcy. The children sent away ... ... ... 299 

Eighteen years of poverty and distress... ... ... ... 300 

" Gertrude " to the rescue. Pestalozzi's religion ... 301 

He turns author. " E. H. of Hermit " ... ... ... 302 

Pestalozzi's belief ... ... ... ... .» ... 303 

The " Hermit " a Christian ... ... ... ... ... 304 

Success of " Leonard and Gertrude " ... ... ... 305 

Gertrude's patience tried ... ... ... ... ... 306 

Being and doing before knowing ... ... ... ... 307 

Pestalozzi's severity. Women Commissioners ... ... 308 

Pestalozzi's seven years of authorship ... ... ... 309 

" Citizen of French Republic." Doubts ... ... ... 310 

Waiting. Pestalozzi's " Inquiry " 311 

Pestalozzi's " Fables " 312 

Pestalozzi's own principles ... ... ... ... ... 313 

Pestalozzi's return to action ... ... ... ... .. 314 

The French at Stanz ... 315 

Pestalozzi at Stanz ... ... ... ... ... ... 316 

Success and expulsion ... ... ... ... ... 317 

At Stanz : Pestalozzi's own account... ... ... 318-332 

VaJue of the five months' experience 333 

Pestalozzi a strange Schoolmaster 334 

At Burgdorf. First official approval 335 

A child's notion of Pestalozzi's teaching ... ... ... 336 

Pestalozzi engineering a new road ... ... ... ... 337 

Psychologizing instruction 338 

School course. Singing ; and the beautiful 339 

Pestalozzi's poverty. Kruesi joins him ... ... ... 340 

Pestalozzi's assistants. The Burgdorf Institute ... .♦. 341 

Success of the Burgdorf Institute ... ... 34a 



XXX CONTENTS. 

Chapter XVI — continued. page 

Reaction. Festal ozzi and Napoleon I .« .» m« 343 

Fellenberg, Pestalozzi goes to Yverdun ... ... ... 344 

A portrait of Pestalozzi , 345 

Prussia adopts Festal ozzianism ... ... ... ... ... 346 

Ritter and others at Yverdun ... ... .. .» 347 

Causes of failure at Yverdun ... ... ... ... ... 348 

Report -made by Father Girard 349 

Girard's mistake. Schmid in flight 350 

Schmid's return. Pestalozzi's fame found useful... ... 351 

Dr. Bell's visit. Death of Mrs. Pestalozzi 352 

Works republished. Clindy. Yverdun left. Death ... 353, 354 

New aim : develop organism ... ... ... ... ... 354 

True dignity of man ... ... ... ... ... ... 355 

Education for all. Mothers' part. Jacob's Ladder 356 

Educator only superintends 357 

First, moral development ... ... ... ... ... 358 

Moral and religious the same ... ... ... ... 359 

Second, intellectual development ... ... ... ... 360 

Learning by " intuition " ... ... ... ... ... 361 

Euisson and Jullien on intuition ... ... ... ... 362 

Pestalozzi and Locke ... ... ... ... ... 363 

Subjects for, and art of, teaching ... ... ... ... 364 

"Mastery" 365 

The body's part in education ... ... ... ... ... 366 

Learning must not be play ... ... ... ... ... 367 

Singing and drawing ... ... ... ... ... ... 368 

Morfs summing-up ... ... ... ... ... ... 369 

Joseph Payne's summing-up ... ... ... ... ... 370 

The " two nations. " Mother's lessons ... ... ... 371 

Mistakes in teaching children ... ... ... ... ... 372 

Children and their teachers ... ... ... ... ... 373 

" Preparatory " Schools 374 

Young boys ill taught at school ... ... ... ... 375 

English folk-schools not Festalozzian ... ... ... ... 376 

Schools judged by results ... ... ... ... ... 377 

Pupil-teachers. Teaching not educating ... ... ... 378 

Lowe or Pestalozzi ? ... ... ... ... ... ... 379 

Chief force, personality of the teacher... ... .^ ... 3}ia 

English care for unessentials .«. .^ >» .^ 38 1 



CONTENTS. 



XXXI 



Chapter XVI — continued. 
Aim at the ideal ... 
Use of theorists. Books 



PAGE 

382 



Chapter XVII.— Friedrich Froebel. (1783-1852.) ... 3S4-413 

Difficulty in understanding Froebel 385 

A lad's quest of unity ... 386 

Froebel wandering without rest ... ... ... ... 387 

Finds his vocation. With Pestalozzi 388 

Froebel at the Universities 389 

Through the Freiheits-krieg. Mineralogy ... ... ... 390 

The " New Education " started 391 

At Keilhau. " Education of Man " published ... ... 392 

Froebel fails in Switzerland 393 

The first Kindergarten 394 

Froebel's last years. Prussian edict against him. His end 395 

Author's attitude towards Reformers 396 

Difficulties with Froebel 397 

" Cui omnia unum sunt " ... ... ... ... ... 398 

Froebel's ideal ;^99 

Theory of development ... ... ... ... ... ... 400 

Development through self-activity ... ... ... ... 401 

True idea found in Nature ... ... ... ... ... 402 

God acts and man acts ... ... ... ... ... 403 

The formative and creative instinct 404 

Rendering the inner outer ... ... ... ... ... 405 

Care for " young plants. " Kindergarten ... ... ... 406 

Child's restlessness : how to use it,.. ... ... ... 407 

Employments in Kindergarten ... ... ... ... ... 408 

No schoolwork in Kindergarten ... ... ... ... 409 

Without the idea the " gifts " fail 410 

The New Education and the old 411 

The old still vigorous ... ... ... ... ... ... 412 

Science the thought of God. Some Froebelians 413 



Chapter XVIII.— Jacotot, a Methodizer. (1770-1840.) 4^4-438 



Self- teaching ... 
I. All can learn 



415 
416 



XXXll 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter XVIII — continued. 

2. Everyone can teach ... ... ... . 

Can he teach facts he does not know?... 
Languages? Sciences? 
Arts such as drawing and music ? 
True teacher within the learner ... 
Training rather than teaching ... 

3. " Tout est dans tout." Quidlibet ex quolibct 
Connexion of knowledges 
Connect with model book. Memorizing ... 
Ways of studying the model book 
Should the book be made or chosen ? 
Robertsonian plan 
Hints for exercises ... 

The good of having learnt 

The old Cambridge " mathematical man " 
Waste of memory at school 
How to stop this waste 

Multum, non multa. De Morgan. Helps. Stephen 

Jacotot's plan for reading and wnting 

For the mother-tongue 

Method of investigation 
Jacotot's last days ... ... 

Chapter XIX. — Herbert Spencer 

Same knowledge for discipline and use ? 

Different stages, different knowledges 

Relative value of knowledges ... 

Knowledge for self-preservation 

Useful knowledge versus the classics ... 

Special instruction versus education 

Scientific knowledge and money-making 

Knowledge about rearing offspring... 

Knowledge of history : its nature and use 

Use of history 

Employment of leisure hours ... 

Poetry and the Arts ... 

More than science needed for complete living. 

Objections to Spencer's curriculum 



CONTENTS. XXX iii 

Chapter XIX — continued. pack 

Citizen's duties. Things not to teach 454 

Need of a science of education ... ... ... ... '455 

Hope of a science ... ... ... ... ... ... 456 

From simple to complex : known to unknown ... ... 457 

Connecting schoolwork with life outside 458 

Books and life ... ... ... ... ... ... 459 

Rfistakes in grammar teaching ... ... ... ... ... 460 

From indefinite to definite : concrete to abstract... ... 461 

The Individual and the Race. Empirical beginning ... 462 

Against "telling." Effect of bad teaching ... ... 463 

lyearning should be pleasurable... ... ... ... ... 464 

Can learning be made interesting?... ... ... ... 465 

Apathy from bad teaching ... ... ... ... ... 466 

Should learning be made interesting ? ... ... ... 467 

Difference between theory and practice ... ... ... 468 

Importance of Herbert Spencer's work ... ... ... 469 

Chapter XX. — Thoughts and Suggestions 470-491 

Want of an ideal ... ... ... ... ... ... 471 

Get pupils to work hard... ... ... ... ... ... 472 

For this arouse interest. Wordsworth ... ... ... 473 

Interest needed for activity ... ... ... ... ... 474 

Teaching young children .„ ... ... ... ... 475 

Value of pictures... ... , 476 

Dr. Vater at Leipzig 477 

Dr. Vogel and Dr. Vater 478 

First knowledge of numbers. Grube ... 479 

Measuring and weigliing. Reading-books ... ... ... 480 

Respect for books. Grammar. Reading... ... ... 481 

Silent and Vocal Reading 482 

Memorising poetry. Composition... ... ... ,,. 483 

Correcting exercises. Three kinds of books 4S4 

No epitomes 485 

Ascham, Bacon, Goldsmith, against them ... ... ... 486 

Arouse interest. Dr. Amc.'d's historical primer ..', ... 487 

A Macaulay, not Mangnall, wanted ... ... ... ... 488 

Beginnings in history and geography ... ... ... 489 

Tales of Travelers ... ... ... ... ... ... 490 

Results positive and negative ... ... ... ,^ 491 



XXXIV 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter XXI.— The Schoolmaster's Moral and Religious page 

Influence 492-503 

Master's power, how gained and lost ... ... ... 493 

Masters, the open and the reserved ... ... ... ... 494 

Danger of excess either way... ... ,,. ... ... 495 

High ideal. Danger of low practice ... ... ... ... 496 

Harm from overworking teachers ... .^ ... ... 497 

Refuge in routine work. Small schools ... ... .., 498 

Influence through the Sixth. Day schools wanted ... 499 

Teaching religion in England and Germany 500 

Religious teaching connected with wor;,hip 501 

Education to goodness and piety ... ... ... ... 502 

How to avoid narrowmindedness .^ 503 



Chapter XXII.— Conclusion .^ 
A growing science of education m. 
Jesuits the first Reformers 
The Jesuits cared for more than classics ... 

Rabelais for " intuition " 

Montaigne for educating mind and body ... 

17th century reaction against books 

Reaction not felt in schools and the Universities... 

Comenius begins science of education ... 

Locke's teacher a disposer of influence 

Locke and public schools. Escape from " idols " 

Rousseau's clean sweep 

Benevolence of Nature. Man disturbs 

We arrange sequences, capitalise ideas ... 

Loss and gain from tradition 

Rousseau for observing and following 

Rousseau exposed " school-learning " ... 

Function of " things " in education 

" New Education " started by Rousseau 
Drawing out. Man and the other animals 
Intuition. Man an organism, a doer and creator 

Antithesis of Old and New Education 

Drill needed. What the Thinkers do for us ... 



504-526 

505 
506 

507 
508 

509 
510 
Sii 
512 
513 
514 
51S 
516 
517 
518 

519 
520 

521 
522 

523 
524 
525 
526 



Appendix. Class Matches. Words and Things. Books 

for Teachers, &c — «. m. ... S27-547 



I 
EFFECTS OF THE RENASCENCE. 



§ I. The history of education, much as it has been 
hitherto neglected, especially in England, must have a great 
future before it. If we ignore the Past we cannot understand 
the Present, or forecast the Future, In this book I am 
going to speak of Reformers or Innovators who aimed at 
changing what was handed down to them ; but the Radical 
can no more escape from the Past, than the Conservative 
can stereotype it. It acts not by attraction only, but no less 
by repulsion. There have been thinkers in latter times who 
have announced themselves as the executioners of the Past 
and laboured to destroy all it has bequeathed to us. They 
have raised the ferocious cry, " Vive la destruction ! Vive 
la mort I Place a Vavenirl Hurrah for destruction! 
H'Krah for death ! Make room for the world that is to be !" 
But their very hatred of the Past has brought them under 
the influence of it. " Do just the opposite of what has been 
(lone and you will do right," said Rousseau ; and this rule 
of negation would make the Past regulate the Present and 
the Future no less than its opposite, " Do always what is 
usual." 

If we cannot get free from the Past in the domain of 
tliought, still less can we in action. Custom is to all our 



THE RENASCENCE. 



No escape from the Past. 



activities what the mainspring is to the watch. We may 
bring forces into play to make the watch go faster or slower, 
but if we took out the mainspring it would not go at all. 
For our mainspring we are indebted to the Past. 

§ 2. In studying the Past we must give our special at- 
tention to those periods in which the course of ideas takes, 
as the French say, a new bend.* Such a period was the 
Renascence. Then it was that the latest bend was given to 
the educational ideal of the civilized world ; and though we 
seem now again to have arrived at a period of change, we 
are still, perhaps far more than we are aware, affected by the 
idea? of the great scholars who guided the intellect of Europe 
in the Revival of Learning. 

§ 3. From the beginning to the end of the fifteenth 
century the balance was trembling between two kinds of 
culture, and the fate of the schoolboy depended on the 
result. In this century men first got a correct conception 
of the globe they were inhabiting. Hitherto they had not 
even professed to have any knowledge of geography ; there 
is no mention of it in the Trivium and Quadrivium which 
were then supposed to form the cycle of things known, if not 
of things knowable. But Columbus and Vasco da Gama 
were grand teachers of geography, and their lessons were 
learnt as far as civilization extended. 

The impetus thus given to the study of the earth might, 
at the beginning of the sixteenth century, have engrossed 
the mind of Europe with the material world, had not the 
leaning tc physical science been encountered and overcome 
by an impulse derived from another discovery. About the 



• The rest of this chnpter was published in the September, 1880, 
number of Education. Boston, U.S.A. 



THE RENASCENCE. 



Discovery of the Classics. 



time of the discovery of America there also came to hght 
the literatures of Greece and Rome. 

§ 4. When I speak of the discovery of the ancient lite- 
ratures as rivalling that of America, this use of the word 
" discovery " may be disputed. It may be urged that though 
the Greek language and literature were unknown in the West 
of Europe till they were brought there by the fugitives after 
the fall of Constantinople in 1453, yet the works of the great 
Latin writers had always been known in Italy, and Dante 
declares himself the disciple of Virgil. And yet I cannot 
give up the word " discovery." In the life of an individual 
it sometimes happens that he suddenly acquires as it were 
a new sense. The world around him remains the same as 
before, but it is not the same to him. A film passes from 
his eyes, and what has been ordinary and unmeaning 
suddenly becomes a source of wonder and delight to him. 
Something similar happens at times in the history of the 
general mind ; indeed our own century has seen a remark- 
able instance of it. In reading the thoughts of great writers 
of earlier times, we cannot but be struck, not only with their 
ignorance of the material world, but also with their ignorance 
of their ignorance. Little as they know, they often speak as if 
they knew everything. Newton could see that he was like a 
child discovering a few shells while the unexplored ocean lay 
before him ; but in those days it required the intellect of a 
Newton to understand this. To the other children the ocean 
st^e.raed to conceal nothing, and they innocently thought that 
all the shells, or nearly all, had been picked up. It was re- 
served for the people of our own century to become aware of 
the marvels which lie around us in the material world, and to 
be fascinated by the discovery. If the human race could live 
through several civilizations without opening its eyes to the 



THE RENASCENCE. 



Mark Pattison's account of Renascence. 

wonders of the earth it inhabits, and then could suddenl7 
become aware of them, we may well understand its retaining 
unheeded the literatures of Greece and Rome for centuries, 
and at length as it were discovering them, and turning to 
them with unbounded enthusiasm and delight. 

As students of education we can hardly attach too much 
importance to this great revolution. For nearly three 
centuries the curriculum in the public schools of Europe 
remained what the Renascence had made it. We have 
again entered on an age of change, but we are still much 
influenced by the ideas of the Renascence, and the best 
way to understand the forces now at work is to trace them 
where possible to their origin. Let us then consider what 
the Renascence was, and how it affected the educational 
system. 

§ 5. In endeavouring to understand the Renascence, we 
cannot do better than listen to what Mark Pattison says of 
it in his "Life of Casaubon": — "In the fifteenth century 
was revealed to a world which had hitherto been trained to 
logical analysis, the beauty of literary form. The conception 
of style or finished expression had died out with the pagan 
schools of rhetoric. It was not the despotic act of Justinian 
in closing the schools of Athens which had suppressed it. 
The sense of art in language decayed from the same general 
causes which had been fatal to all artistic perception. Ban- 
iished from the Roman Empire in the sixth century 01 
earlier, the classical conception of beauty of form re-entered 
the circle of ideas after near a thousand years of oblivion 
and abeyance. Cicero and Virgil, Livius and Ovid, had 
been there all along, but the idea of composite harmony on 
which their works were constructed was wanting. The 
restored conception, as if to recoup itself for its long sup' 



THE RENASCENCE. 



Revival of taste for beauty in literature. 

pression, took entire possession of the mind of Europe. 
The first period of the Renascence passed in adoration of 
the awakened beauty, and in efforts to copy and multiply it." 

§ 6. Here Mark Pattison speaks as if the conception of 
beauty of form belonged exclusively to the ancients and 
those who learnt of them. This seems to require some 
abatement. There are points in which mediaeval art tar 
excelled the art of the Renascence. The thirteenth century, 
as Archbishop Trench has said, was "rich in glorious creations 
of almost every kind;" and in that century our great Enghsh 
architect, Street, found the root of all that is best in modern 
art. (See "Dublin Afternoon Lectures," 1868.) 

But there are expressions of beauty to which the Greeks, 
and those who caught their spirit, were keenly alive, and 
to which the people of the Middle Age seem to have been 
blind. The first is beauty in the human form ; the second 
is beauty in literature. 

The old delight in beauty in the human form has never 
come back to us. Mr. Ruskin tells us we are an ugly race, 
with ill-shapen Hmbs, and well pleased with our ugliness 
and deformity, and in reply we only mutter something 
about the necessity of clothing both for warmth and 
decency. But as to the other expression of beauty, 
beauty in literature, the mind of Europe again became 
conscious of it in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 
The re-awakening of this sense of beauty we call the 
Renascence. 

§ 7. Before we consider the effect of this intellectual 
revolution on education, let us be sure that we are not 
"paying ourselves with words," and that we know exactly 
what we mean by " literature." 

When the conceptions of an individual mind are ex- 



THE RENASCENCE. 



What is Literature? 



pressed in a permanent form of words, we get literature. 
The sum total of all the permanent forms of expression in 
one language make up the literature of that language ; 
and if no one has given his conceptions a form which 
has been preserved, the language is without a literature. 
There are then two things essential to a literary work: 
first, the conceptions of an individual mind; second, a 
permanent form of expression. Hence it follows that the 
domain of literature is distinct from the domain of natural 
or mathematical science. Science does not give us the 
conceptions of an individual mind, but it tells us what every 
rational person who studies the subject must think. And 
science is entirely independent of any form of words : a 
proposition of Euclid is science ; a sonnet of Wordsworth's 
is literature. We learn from Euclid certain truths which 
we should have learnt from some one else if Euclid had 
never existed, and the propositions may be conveyed equally 
well in different forms of words and in any language. But 
a sonnet of Wordsworth's conveys thought and feeling 
peculiar to the poet; and even if the same thought and 
feeling were conveyed to us in other words, we should lose 
at least half of what he has given us. Poetry is indeed 
only one kind of literature, but it is the highest kind ; and 
what is true of literary works in verse, is true also in a 
measure of literary works in prose. So great is the differ- 
ence between science and literature, that in literature, as 
the first Lord Lytton said, the best books are generally the 
oldest ; in science they are the newest. 

§ 8. At present we are concerned with literature only. 
There are two ways in which a work of literature may 
excite our admiration and affect our minds. These are, 
first, by the beauty of the conceptions it conveys to us ; and 



THE RENASCENCE. 



Renascence loved beauty of expression. 

second, by the beauty of the language in which it conveys 
them. In the greatest works the two excellences will be 
combined.* 

Now the literary taste proper fastens especially on the 
second of the two, i.e., on beauty of expression ; and the 
Renascence was the revival of literary taste. " It was," as 
Mark Pattison says, "the conception of style or finished 
expression which had died out with the pagan schools of 
rhetoric, and which re-entered the circle of ideas after a 
thousand years of oblivion and abeyance." If we lose 
sight of this, we shall be perplexed by the unbounded 
enthusiasm which we find in the sixteenth century for the 
old classics. What great evangel, we may ask, had Cicero 
and Virgil and Ovid, or even Plato and the Greek drama- 
tists, for men who lived when Europe had experienced a 
thousand years of Christianity? The answer is simple. 
They had none whatever. Their thoughts and conceptions 
were not adapted to the wants of the new world. The 
civilization of the Christian nations of the sixteenth cen- 
tury was a very different thing from the civilization of 
Greece and Rome. It had its own thoughts, its own 
problems, its own wants. The old-world thoughts could 
not be thought over again by it. This indeed was felt 
though not admitted by the Renascence scholars them- 
selves. Had it been the thoughts of the ancients which 
seemed to them so valuable they would have made some 
effort tc diffuse those thoughts in the languages of the 
modern world. Much as a great literary work loses by 
translation, there may still be enough left of it to be a 

• On the nature of literature see Cardinal Newman's " Lectures on 
the Nature of a University. University Subjects. II. Litera.ure." 



THE RENASCENCE. 



No translations. The "educated. 

source of instruction and delight. The thoughts of 
Aristotle, conveyed in a Latin translation of an Arabic 
translation, profoundly affected the mind of Europe in the 
Middle Ages. The Bible, or Book par excellence, is known 
to few indeed in its original form. Some great writers — Cer- 
vantes, and Shakespeare, and the author of the " Arabian 
Nights" — please and instruct nations who know not the 
sound of the languages wherein their works are composed. 
If then the great writers of Greece and Rome had been 
valued for their matter, their works would have been trans- 
lated by the Renascence scholars as the Bible was translated 
by the Reformers, and the history of modern education would 
have taken a very different turn from that which awaited 
it. But it was not so. The Renascence scholars did all 
they could to discourage translations. For the grand 
discovery which we call the Revival of Learning was, not 
that the ancients had something to say, but that whatever 
they had to say they knew how to say it. 

§ 9. And thus it happens that in the period of change, 
when Europe was re-arranging its institutions, developing new 
ideas and settling into new grooves of habit, we find the men 
most influential in education entirely fascinated by beauty 
of expression, and this in two ancient languages, so that the 
one thing needful for the young seemed to them an intro- 
duction to the study of ancient writings. The inevitable 
consequence was this : education became a mere synonym 
for instruction in Latin and Greek. The only ideal set up 
for the " educated " was the classical scholar. 

§ 10. Perhaps the absurdity of taking this ideal, an 
ideal which is obviously fitted for a small class of men only, 
and proposing it for general adoption, was partly concealed 
from the Renascence scholars by the peculiar circumstances 



THE RENASCENCE. 



Spread of literature by printing-. 

of their age. No doubt they thought literature would in 
the future be a force capable of much wider application 
than it had ever been before. True, literature had till 
then affected a small class only. Literature meant books, 
books meant MSS., and MSS. were rare and costly. Litera- 
ture, the embodiment of grand thoughts in grand words, 
had existed before letters, or at least without letters. The 
Homeric poems, for example, had been known to thousands 
who could not read or write. But beauty of expression 
naturally got associated and indeed confounded with the 
art by which it was preserved ; so the creations of the mind, 
when embodied in particular combinations of words, ac- 
quired the name of literature or letters, and became almost 
exclusively the affair of those who had opportunities of study, 
opportunities afforded only to the few. During the Middle 
Ages every one who could read was allowed his " privilege 
of clergy j" that is, he was assumed to be a clergyman. 
Literature then was not thought of as a means of instruction. 
But at the very time that the beauty of the ancient writings 
dawned on the mind of Europe, a mechanical invention 
seemed to remove all hindrances to the spread of literature. 
The scholars seized on the printing press and thought by 
means of it to give all "the educated" a knowledge of 
classics. 

§ II. We cannot help speculating what would have been 
the effect of the discovery of printing if it had been made at 
another time. As there may be literature without books, so 
there may be books without literature. If at the time of 
the invention of printing there had been no literature, no 
creations of individual minds embodied in permanent forms 
of speech, books might have been used as apparatus in a 
mental gymnasium, or they might have been made the 



lO THE RENASCENCE. 

School course settled before Bacon. 

means of conveying information. But just then the intellect 
of Europe was tired of mental gymnastics. It had taken 
exercise in the Trivium like a squirrel in its revolving cage, 
and was vexed to find it made no progress.* As for infor- 
mation there was little to be had. The age of observation 
and of physical science was not yet. So the printing press 
was entirely at the service of the new passion for literature 
and the scholars dreamed of the general diffusion of literary 
culture by means of printed books. 

§ 12. For some two centuries the literary spirit had 
supreme control over the intellect of Europe, and the 
literary spirit could then find satisfaction nowhere but in 
the study of the ancient classics. The natural consequence 
was that throughout this period the " educated man " was 
supposed to be identified with the classical scholar. The 
great rival of the literary spirit, the scientific spirit which 
cares for nothing but sequences independent of the human 
mind, began to show itself early in the seventeenth century : 
its first great champion was Francis Bacon. But by this 
time the school course of study had been settled, and two 
centuries had to elapse before the scientific spirit eould 
unsettle it again. Even now when we speak of a man as 
" well-educated " we are commonly understood to mean 
that in his youth he was taught the two classical languages. 

§ 13, The taking of the classical scholar as the only 

• I see Carlyle has used a similar metaphor in the same connexion : 
*• Consider the old schoolmen and their pilgrimage to«-ards Truth ! the 
failhfullest endeavour, incessant unwearied motion ; often great natural 
vigour, only no progress ; nothing but antic feats of one limb poised 
against the other; there they balanced, somerseted, and made postures j 
at best gyrated swiftly with some pleasure like spinning dervishes and 
ended where they began." — Characteristics , Misc., vol. iii, 5, 



THE RENASCENCE. II 

First defect: Learner above Doer. 

ideal of the educated man has been a fruitful source of evil 
in the history of education. 

I. This ideal exalted the learner above the doer. As fai 
back as Xenophon, we find a contest between the passive 
ideal and the active, between the excellence which depends 
on a knowledge of what others have thought and done and 
the excellence which comes of thinking and doing. But 
the excellence derived from learning had never been highly 
esteemed. To be able to repeat Homer's poetry was 
regarded in Greece as we now regard a pleasing accomplish- 
ment ; but the dignity of the learned man as such was not 
within the range of Greek ideas. Many of the Romans 
after they began to study Greek literature certainly piqued 
themselves on being good Greek scholars, and Cicero 
occasionally quotes with all the airs of a pedant ; but so 
thoroughly was the contrary ideal, the ideal of the doer, 
estabhshed at Rome, that nobody ever dreamt of placing its 
rival above it. In the decline of the Empire, especially at 
Alexandria, we find for the first time honours paid to the 
learned man ; but he was soon lost sight of again. At the 
Renascence he burst into sudden blaze, and it was then 
discovered that he was what every man would wish to be. 
Thus the Renascence scholars, notwithstanding their ad 
miration of the great nations of antiquity, set up an ideal 
which those nations would heartily have despised. The 
schoolmaster very readily adopted this ideal ; and schools 
have been places of learning, not training, ever since. 

§ 14. II. The next defect I observe in the Renascence 
ideal is this : it attributes to literature more direct power 
over common life than literature has ever had, or is ever 
likely to have. 

1 say direct power, for indirectly literature is one of the 



12 THE RENASCENCE. 

Second : Overestimate of literature. 

grand forces which act on all of us ; but it acts on us through 
others, its most important function being to affect great 
intellects, the minds of those who think out and act out 
important changes. Its direct action on the mass of mankind 
is after all but insignificant. We have seen that literature 
consists in permanent forms of words, expressing the 
conceptions of individual minds ; and these forms will be 
studied only by those who are interested in the conceptions 
or find pleasure in the mode in which they are expressed. 
Now the vast majority of ordinary people are without these 
inducements to literary study. They take a keen interest 
in everything connected with their relations and intimate 
friends, and a weaker interest in the thinkings and sayings 
and doings of every one else who is personally known to 
them ; but as to the mental conceptions of those who lived 
in other times, or if now ahve are not known even by sight, 
the ordinary person is profoundly indifferent to them ; 
and of course delight in expression, as such, is out of the 
question. The natural consequence is that the habit of 
reading books is by no means common. Mark Pattison 
observes that there are few books to be found in most 
English middle-class homes, and he says : " The dearth of 
books is only the outward and visible sign of the mental 
torpor which reigns in those destitute regions " (see " Fort- 
nightly Review," November, 1877). I much doubt if he 
would have found more books in the middle-class homes of 
the Continent. There is only one kind of reading that is 
nearly universal — the reading of newspapers ; and the 
newspaper lacks the element of permanence, and belongs 
to the domain of talk rather than of literature. 

Even when we get among the so-called " educated," we 
find that those who care for literature form a very small 



THE RENASCENCE. 1 3 

Literary taste not common. 

minority. The rest have of course read Shakespeare and 
Milton and Walter Scott and Tennyson, but they do not 
read them. The lion's share of our time and thoughts and 
interests must be given to our business or profession, 
whatever that may be ; and in few instances is this con- 
nected with literature. For the rest, whatever time or 
thought a man can spare from his calling is mostly given to 
his family, or to society, or to some hobby which is not 
literature. 

And love of literature is not shown in such reading as is 
common. The literary spirit shows itself, as I said, in 
appreciating beauty of expression, and how far beauty of 
expression is cared for we may estimate from the fact that 
few people think of reading anything a second time. The 
ordinary reader is profoundly indifferent about style, and 
will not take the trouble to understand ideas. He keeps to 
periodicals or light fiction, which enables the mind to loll in 
its easy chair (so to speak) and see pass before it a series of 
pleasing images. An idea, as Mark Pattison says, "is an 
excitant, comes from mind and calls forth mind ; an image 
is a sedative;" and most people when they take up a book 
are seeking a sedative. 

So literature is after all a very small force in the lives 
of most men, and perhaps even less in the lives of most 
women. Why then are the employments of the school- 
room arranged on the supposition that it is the grand force 
of all? The reason is, that we have inherited from the 
Renascence a false notion of the function of literature. 

§ 15. III. I must now point out a fault in the Re- 
nascence ideal which is perhaps the most remarkable of all. 
Those by whom this ideal was set up were entirely possessed 
by an enthusiasm for literature, and they made the mistake 



14 THE RENASCENCE. 

Third: Literature banished from school. 

of attributing to literature a sliare in general culture which 
literature seems incapable of taking. After this we could 
little have expected that the new ideal woyld exclude 
literature from the schoolroom, and yet so it has actually 
turned out. 

As a literary creation contains the conceptions of an 
individual mind expressed in a permanent form of words, it 
exists only for those who can understand the words or at 
least the conceptions. 

From this it follows that literature for the young must 
have its expression in the vernacular. The instances are 
rare indeed in which any one below the age of fifteen or 
sixteen (perhaps I might put the limit a year or two higher) 
understands any but the mother tongue. In the mother 
tongue indeed some forms of literature exercise a great 
influence over young minds. Ballad literature seems 
especially to belong to youth, the youth of nations and 
of individuals. Aristotle educated Alexander with Homer ; 
and we can easily imagine the effect which the Iliad must 
have had on the young Greeks. Although in the days of 
Plato instruction was not confined to literature, he gives 
this account of part of the training in the Athenian schools : 
•' Placing the pupils on benches, the instructors make them 
read and learn by heart the poems of good poets in which 
are many moral lessons, many tales and eulogies and lays 
of the brave men of old ; that the boys may imitate them 
with emulation and strive to become such themselves." 
Here we see a very important function attributed to 
literature in the bringing up of the young; but the literature 
so used must obviously be in the language of the learners. 

The influence of a literary work may, however, extend itself 
far beyond the limits of its own language. When our minds 



THE RENASCENCE. 1$ 

Translations would be literature. 

can receive and take pleasure in the conceptions of a great 
writer, he may speak to us by an interpreter. At the 
Renascence there were books in the world which might have 
affected the minds of the young — Plutarch, Herodotus, and 
above all Homer. But, as I have already said, it was not the 
conceptions, but the literary form of the ancients, which 
seemed to the Renascence scholars of such inestimable value, 
so they refused to give the conceptions in any but the 
original words. " Studying the ancients in translations," says 
Melancthon, " is merely looking at the shadow." He could 
not have made a greater mistake. As far as the young are 
concerned the truth is exactly the reverse. The translation 
would give the substance : the original can give nothing but 
the shadow. Let us take the experience of Mr, Kinglake, 
the author of " Eothen." This distinguished Eton man, 
fired by his remembrances of Homer, visited the Troad.- 
He had, as he tells us, " clasped the Iliad line by line to his 
brain with reverence as well as love," Well done, Eton ! we 
are tempted to exclaim when we read this passage : here at 
least is proof that some literahire was taught in those days 
of the dominion of the classics. But stop ! It seems that 
this clasping did not take place at Eton, but in happy days 
before Eton, when Kinglake knew no Greek and read trans- 
lations. "Heroic days are these," he writes, "but the Dark 
Ages of schoolboy life come closing over them, I suppose 
it's all right in the end : yet, by Jove ! at first sight it does 
seem a sad intellectual fall, . . . The dismal change is 
ordained and thin meagre Latin (the same for everybody) 
with small shreds and patches of Greek, is thrown like a 
pauper's pall over all your early lore ; instead of sweet 
knowledge, vile monkish doggrel, grammars and graduses, 
dictionaries and lexicons, horrible odds and ends of dead 



l6 THE RENASCENCE. 

The classics not written for children. 

languages are given you for your portion, and down you fall 
from Roman story to a three-inch scrap of ' Scriptorea 
Romani' — from Greek poetry down, down, to the cold 
rations of 'Poetae Grseci,' cut up by commentators and 
served out by schoolmasters !" (" Eothen," the Troad.) 

We see from this how the Renascence ideal had the 
extraordinary effect of banishing literature from the school- 
room. Literature has indeed not ceased to influence the 
young ; it still counts for much more in their lives than in 
the lives of their seniors ; but we all know who are the 
writers who affected our own minds in childhood and youth, 
and who affect the minds of our pupils now — not Eutropius 
or Xenophon, or Caesar or Cicero, but Defoe and Swift and 
Marryatt and Walter Scott. The ancient writings which 
were literature to Melancthon and Erasmus, as they are 
still to many in our universities and elsewhere, can never be 
literature to the young. Most of the classical authors read 
in the schoolroom could not be made Hterature to young 
people even by means of translations, for they were men who 
wrote for men and women only. We see that it would be 
absurd to make an ordinary boy of twelve or fourteen study 
Burke or Pope. And if we do not make him read Burke, 
whose language he understands, why do we make him read 
Cicero whose language he does not understand? If he can- 
not appreciate Pope, why do we teach him Horace ? The 
Renascence gives us the explanation of this singular anomaly. 
The scholars of that age were so delighted with the "coro. 
posite harmony " of the ancient classics that the study of these 
classics seemed to them the one thing worth living for. The 
main, if not the only object they kept in view in bringing up 
the young was to gain for them admission to the treasure 
house ; and though young people could not understand the 



THE RENASCENCE. 1/ 

Language versus Literature. 

ancient writings as literature, they might at least study 
them as language and thus be ready to enjoy them as litera- 
ture in after-life. Thus the subject of instruction in the 
schoolroom came to be, not the classics but, the classical 
languages. The classics were used as school books, but the 
only meaning thought of was the meaning of the detached 
word or at best of the detached sentence. You ask a child 
learning to read if he understands what he is reading about, 
and he says, " I can't think of the meaning because I am 
thinking of the words." The same thing happened in the 
schoolboy's study of the classics, and so it has come to pass 
that to this day the great writers of antiquity discharge a 
humble function which they certainly never contemplated. 

" Great Caesar's body dead and turned to clay 
May stop a hole to keep the wind away." 

And great Caesar's mind has been turned to uses almost as 
paltry. He has in fact written for the schoolroom not a 
commentary on the Wars of Gaul — nothing of the kind — 
but simply a book of exercises in Latin construing ; and an 
excellent book it would be if he had only graduated the 
difficulties better. 

§ 1 6. IV. There is yet another weakness about the 
Renascence ideal — a weakness from which most ideals are 
free. 

Most ideals have this merit at least, that he who makes 
even a feeble and abortive attempt to reach them is benefited 
in proportion to his advance, however small that advance 
may be. If he fails to seize the coat of gold, he carries 
away, as the proverb tells us, at least one of the sleeves ; or, 
to use George Herbert's metaphor — 
"... Wlio aimeth at the sky, 
Shoots higher far than he who means a tree." 

D 



THE RENASCENCE. 



Fourth: Miss as good as a mile. 

But the learned ideal has not even this advantage. The 
first stage, the study of the ancient languages, is so totally 
different from the study of the ancient literatures to which 
it is the preliminary, that the student who never goes beyond 
this first stage either gets no benefit at all, or a benefit which 
is not of the kind intended. Suppose I am within a walk, 
though a long one, of the British Museum, and hearing of 
some valuable books in the library, which I can see nowhere 
else, I set off to consult them. In this case it makes no 
difference to me how valuable the books are if I do not 
get as far as the Museum.* My friends may comfort me 
with the assurance that the walk must have done me 
good. Perhaps so ; but I left home to get a knowledge of 
certain books, not to exercise my legs. Had exercise 
been my object I should probably have chosen another 
direction. 

Now schoolmasters, since the Renascence, have been in 
the habit of leading all their pupils through the back slums 
of the Seven Dials and Soho in the direction of the British 
Museum, with the avowed purpose of taking them to the 
library, although they knew full well that not one pupil in 
ten, not one in fifty, would ever reach the door. To produce 
a few scholars able to appreciate the classics of Greece and 
Rome they have sacrificed everybody else ; and according 
to their own showing they have condemned a large portion 
of the upper classes, nearly all the middle classes, and quite 
all the poorer classes to remain "uneducated." And, ac- 
cording to the theory of the schoolroom, one-half of the 



* This illustration was suggested by a similar one in Prof. J. R. 
Seeley's essay " On the Teaching of English " in his Lectures and Essays, 
1870. 



THE RENASCENCE. 1 9 

Fifth : Neglect of children. 

human race — the women — have not beensupposed to need 
education. For them " accomplishments " have been held 
sufficient. 

§ 17. V. In conclusion I must point out one effect of 
the Renascence ideal which seems to me no less mischievous 
than those I have already mentioned. This ideal led the 
schoolmasters to attach little importance to the education of 
children. Directly their pupils were old enough for Latin 
Grammar the schoolmasters were quite at home; but till 
then the children's time seemed to them of small value, and 
they neither knew nor cared to know how to employ it. If 
the little ones could learn by heart forms of words which 
would afterwards " come in useful," the schoolmasters were 
ready to assist such learning by unsparing application of the 
rod, but no other learning seemed worthy even of a caning. 
Absorbed in the world of books they overlooked the world 
of nature. Galileo complains that he could not induce them 
to look through his telescope, for they held that truth could 
be arrived at only by comparison of MSS. No wonder then 
that they had so little sympathy with children, and did not 
know how to teach them. It is by slow degrees that we are 
breaking away from the bad tradition then established, are 
getting to understand children, and with such leaders as 
Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel, are investigating the best 
education for them. We no longer think of them as imma- 
ture men and women, but see that each stage has its own 
completeness, and that there is a perfection in childhood 
which must precede the perfection of manhood just as truly 
as the flower goes before the fruit. "Childhood," says 
Rousseau, "has its own ways of seeing, feeling, thinking;" 
and it is by studying these that we find out how children 
should be educated. Our connexion with the world of 



20 THE RENASCENCE. 

Child's study of his surroundings. 

nature seems much closer in our early years than ever 
afterwards. The child's mind seems drawn out to its 
surroundings. He is intensely interested in the new world 
in which he finds himself, and whilst so many of us grown 
people need a flapper, like the sages of Laputa, to call our 
attention from our own thoughts to anything that meets the 
eye or ear, the child sees and hears everything, and every- 
thing seen or heard becomes associated in his mind not so 
much with thought as with feeling. Hence it is that we 
most of us look back wistfully to our early days, and confess 
sorrowfully that though years may have brought " the philo- 
sophic mind," 

"... Nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower." 

The material world then seems to supply just those objects, 
whether birds, beasts, or flowers, by which the child is 
attracted, and on which his faculties will therefore be most 
naturally and healthily employed. But the Renascence 
schoolmasters had little notion of this. If you think that 
the greatest scholar is the greatest man, you will, as a 
matter of course, place at the other end of the scale those 
who are not scholars at all. An English inspector, who 
seems to have thought children had been created with due 
regard to the Revised Code of the Privy Council, spoke of 
the infants who could not be classed by their performances 
in "the three R's" as "the fag end of the school ;" and no 
doubt the Renascence schoolmasters considered the children 
the fag end of humanity. The great scholars were indeed 
far above the race of pedants ; but the schoolmasters who 
adopted their ideal were not. And what is a pedant ? "A 
man who has got rid of his brains to make room for his 



THE RENASCENCE. 21 

Aut Caesar aut nihil. 

learning."* The pedantic schoolmasters of the Renascence 
wished the mind of the pupil to be cleared of everything 
else, that it might have room for the languages of Greece 
and Rome. But what if the mind failed to take in its 
destined freight? In that case the schoolmasters had 
nothing else for it, and were content that it should go 
empty. 

• Miss J. D.Potter, in "Journal of Education." London, June, 1879 



22 



II. 

RENASCENCE TENDENCIES. 



§ I. In considering and comparing the two great epochs 
of intellectual activity and change in modern times, viz., the 
sixteenth century and the nineteenth, we cannot but be 
struck with one fundamental difference between them. 

§ 2. It will affect all our thoughts, as Sir Henry Maine has 
said, whether we place the Golden Age in the Past or in the 
Future. In the nineteenth century the "good time" is 
supposed to be "coming," but in the sixteenth century all 
thinkers looked backwards. The great Italian scholars gazed 
with admiration and envy on the works of ancient Greece 
and Rome, and longed to restore the old languages, and as 
much as possible the old world, so that such works might be 
produced again. Many were suspected, not altogether per- 
haps without reason, of wishing to uproot Christianity itself,* 
that they might bring back the Golden Age of Pericles. 

§ 3. At the same time another movement was going on, 
principally in Germany. Here too, men were endeavouring 
to throw off the immediate past in order to revive the remote 



• See Erasmus's Ciceronianus, or account of it, in Henry Barnard's 
German Teachers, 



RENASCENCE TENDENCIES. 23 

Reviving the Past. Tlie Scholars. 

past. The religious reformers, like the scholars, wished to 
restore a golden age, only a different age, not the age of the 
Antigone, but the age of the Apostles' Creed. Thus it 
happened that the scholars and the reformers joined 
in attaching the very highest importance to the ancient 
languages. Through these languages, and, as they thought, 
through them alone, was it possible to get a glimpse into the 
bygone world in which their soul delighted. 

§ 4. But though all joined in extolling the ancient writ- 
ings, we find at the Renascence great differences in the way 
of regarding these writings and in the objects for which they 
were employed. A consideration of these differences will 
help us to understand the course of education when the 
Renascence was a force no longer. 

§ 5. Very powerful in education were the great scholars, 
of whom Erasmus was perhaps the greatest, certainly the 
most celebrated. In devoting their lives to the study of the 
ancients their object was not merely to appreciate literary 
style, though this was a source of boundless delight to them, 
but also to understand the classical writings and the ancient 
world through them. These men, whom we may call par 
excellence the Scholars, cared indeed before all things for 
literature ; but with all their delight in the form they never 
lost sight of the substance. They knew the truth that 
Milton afterwards expressed in these memorable words: 
" Though a linguist should pride himself to have all the 
tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not 
studied the solid things in them as well as the words and 
lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned 
man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his 
mother dialect only." (Tractate to Hardib, § 4). 

So Erasmus and the scholars would have all the educated 



24 RENASCENCE TENDENCIES. 

The Scholars: things for words. 

understand the classical authors. But to understand words 
you must know the things to which the words refer. Thus 
the Scholars were led to advocate a partial study of things a 
kind of realism. But we must carefully observe a peculiarity 
of this scholastic realism which distinguished it from the 
realism of a later date — the realism of Bacon. The study 
of things was undertaken not for its own sake, but simply in 
order to understand books. Perhaps some of us are con- 
scious that this kind of literary realism has not wholly passed 
away. We may have observed wild flowers, or the changes 
in tree or cloud, because we find that the best way to under- 
stand some favourite author, as Wordsworth or Tennyson. 
This will help us to understand the realism of the sixteenth 
century. The writings of great authors have been compared 
to the plaster globes (" celestial globes " as we call them), 
which assist us in understanding the configuration of the 
stars {Guesses at Truth,]. 47). Adopting this simile we may 
say that the Scholars loved to study the globe for its own 
sake, and when they looked at stars they did so with the 
object of understanding the globe. Thus we read of doctors 
who recommended their pupils to look at actual cases of 
disease as the best commentary on the works of Hippocrates 
and Galen. This kind of realism was good as far as it went, 
but it did not go far. Of course the end in view limited 
the study, and the Scholars took no interest in things except 
those which were mentioned in the classics. They had no 
desire to investigate the material universe and make dis- 
coveries for themselves. This is why Galileo could not 
induce them to look through his telescope ; for the ancients 
had no telescopes, and the Scholars wished to see nothing 
that had not been seen by their favourite authors. First 
then we have the Scholars, headed by Erasmus. 



RENASCENCE TENDENCIES. 2$ 

Verbal Realists: things through words. 

§ 6. Next we find a party less numerous and for a time 
less influential, who did care about things for the sake of the 
things themselves; but carried away by the literary curient 
of their age, they sought to learn about them not directly, 
but only by reading. Here again we have a kind of realism 
which is not yet extinct. Some years ago I was assured by 
a Graduate of the University of London who had passed in 
chemistry, that, as far as he knew, he had never seen a 
chemical in his life : he had got all his knowledge from 
books. While such a thing is possible among us, we need 
not wonder if those who in the sixteenth century prized the 
knowledge of things, allowed books to come between the 
learner and the object of his study, if they regarded Nature 
as a far-off country of which we could know nothing but 
what great authors reported to us. 

As this party, unlike the Scholars, did not delight in litera- 
ture as such, but simply as a means of acquiring knowledge, 
literary form was not valued by them, and they preferred 
Euclid to Sophocles, Columella to Virgil. Seeking to learn 
about things, not immediately, but through words, they have 
received from Raumer a name they are likely to keep — 
Verbal Realists. In the sixteenth century the greatest of the 
Verbal Realists also gave a hint of Realism proper ; for he 
was no less a man than Rabelais. 

§ 7. Lastly we come to those who, as it turned out, were 
to have more influence in the schoolroom than the Scholars 
and the Verbal Realists combined. I do not know that 
these have had any name given them, but for distinction 
sake we may call them Stylists. In studying literature the 
Scholars cared both for form and substance, the Verbal 
Realists for substance only, and the Stylists for form only. 
The Stylists gave up their lives, not, like the scholars, to gain 



26 RENASCENCE TENDENCIES. 

Stylists: words for themselves. 

a thorough understanding of the ancient writings and of the 
old world, but to an attempted reproduction of the ancient 
languages and of the classical literary form. 

§ 8. In marking these tendencies at the Renascence, we 
must remember that though distinguished by their tenden- 
cies, these Scholars, Verbal Realists, and Stylists, were not 
divided into clearly defined parties. Categories like these 
no doubt assist us in gaining precision of thought, but we 
must not gain precision at the expense of accuracy. The 
tendencies we have been considering did not act in precisely 
opposite directions, and all were to some extent aftected by 
them. But one tendency was predominant in one man 
and another in another; and this justifies us in calUng 
Sturm a Stylist, Erasmus a Scholar, and Rabelais a Verbal 
Realist. 

§ 9. In one respect they were all agreed. The world was 
to be regenerated by means of books. Nothing pleased 
them more than to think of their age as the Revival of 
Learning. 



27 



III. 
STURMIUS. 

1507 -1589. 



§ I. The curriculum bequeathed by the Renascence and 
stereotyped in the School Codes of Germany, in the Ratio 
of the Jesuits, and in the English public school system, was 
greatly influenced by the most famous schoolmaster of the 
fifteen hundreds, John Sturm, who was for over forty years 
Rector of the Strassburg Gymnasium. 

§ 2. Sturm was a fine specimen of the successful man : 
he knew what his contemporaries wanted, and that was just 
what he wanted. " He was a blessed fellow," as Prince Hal 
says of Poins, " to think as every man thought," and he not 
only " kept the roadway " himself, but he also " personally 
conducted" great bands of pupils over it, at one time " 200 
noblemen, 24 counts and barons, and 3 princes." What 
could schoolmaster desire more? 

§ 3. But I frankly own that Sturm is no favourite of mine, 
and that I think that he did much harm to education. 
However, his influence in the schoolroom was so great that 
I must not leave him unnoticed ; and I give some intorma- 
tion, taken mainly from Raumer's account of him, which is 
translated in Henry Barnard's "German Teachers and 



ZH STURMIUS. 



His early life. Settles in Strassburg. 

Educators." I have also looked at the exhaustive article by 
Dr. Bossier in K. A. Schmid's Encyklopddie {sub v.) 

§ 4. Johji Sturm, born at Schleiden in the Eifel, not far 
from Cologne, in 1507, was one of 15 children, and would 
net have had much teaching had not his father been steward 
to a nobleman, with whose sons he was brought up. He 
always spoke with reverence and affection of his early teachers, 
and from them no doubt he acquired his thirst for learning. 
With the nobleman's sons and under the guidance of a tutor 
he was sent to Liege, and there he attended a school of the 
" Brethren of the Life in Common," alias Hieronymites. 
Many of the arrangements of this school he afterwards 
reproduced in the Strassburg Gymnasium, and in this way 
the good Brethren gained an influence over classical educa- 
tion throughout the world. 

§ 5. Between the age of 15 and 20 Sturm was at Lyons, 
and before the end of this period he was forced into teaching 
for a maintenance. He then, like many other learned men 
of the time, turned printer. We next find him at the 
University of Paris, where he thought of becoming a doctor 
of medicine, but was finally carried away from natural science 
by the Renascence devotion to literature, and he became a 
popular lecturer on the classics. From Paris he was called 
to Strassburg (then, as now, in Germany) in 1537. In 1538 
he published his plan of a Gymnasium or Grammar School, 
with the title, " The right way of opening schools of literature 
{De Liter arum Ludis recte aperiendis)" and some years 
afterwards (1565) he published his Letters {Classicce Epis- 
tolce) to the different form-masters in his school. 

§ 6. The object of teaching is three-fold, says Sturm, 
" piety, knowledge, and the art of expression." The student 
should be distinguished by reasonable and neat speech 



STURMIUS. 29 



His course of Latin. Dismissed. 

{ratione et oratione). To attain this the boys in his school 
had to give seven years to the acquirement of a pure Latin 
sty<e ; then two years more were devoted to elegance ; then 
five years of collegiate life were to be given to the art of 
Latin speech. This course is for ten years carefully mapped 
out by Sturm in his Letters to the masters. The foundation 
is to be laid in the tenth class, which the child enters at seven 
years old, and in which he learns to read, and is turned on 
to the declensions and conjugations. We have for all classes 
the exact " pensum," and also specimens of the questions put 
in examination by the top boy of the next class above, a hint 
which was not thrown away upon the Jesuits. 

§ 7. Sturm cries over the superior advantages of the 
Roman children. " Cicero was but twenty when he delivered 
his speeches in behalf of Quintius and Roscius ; but in these 
days where is there the man even of eighty, who could make 
such speeches i Yet there are books enough and intellect 
enough. What need we further? We need the Latin 
language and a correct method of teaching. Both these we 
must have before we can arrive at the summit of eloquence." 

§ 8. Sturm did not, like Rabelais, put Greek on a level 
with Latin or above it. The reading of Greek words is begun 
in the sixth class. Hebrew, Sturm did not himself learn till 
he was nearly sixty. 

§ 9. With a thousand boys in his school, and carrying on 
correspondence with the leading sovereigns of his age, Sturm 
was a model of the successful man. But in the end " the 
religious difficulty " was too much even for him, and he was 
dismissed from his post by his opponents " for old age and 
other causes." Surely the "other causes" need not have 
been mentioned. Sturm was then eighty years old. 

§ 10. The successful man in every age is the man who 



30 STURMIUS. 



The Schoolmaster taught Latin mainly. 

chooses a popular and attainable object, and shows tre- 
inendous energy in pursuit of it. Most people don't know 
precisely what they want; and among the few who do, 
nine-tenths or more fail through lack of energy. But Sturm 
was quite clear in his aim, and having settled the means, he 
showed immense energy and strength of will in going through 
with them. He wanted to restore the language of Cicero 
and Ovid and to give his pupils great power of elegant 
expression in that language. Like all schoolmasters he 
professed that piety and knowledge (which in more modern 
phrase would be wisdom and knowledge) should come first, 
but like most schoolmasters he troubled himself mainly, if 
not exclusively, about the art of expression. As an abstract 
proposition the schoohnaster admits that to have in your 
head something worth saying is more important than to have 
the power of expression ready in case anything worth saying 
should "come along." But the schoolmaster's art always 
has taken, and I suppose, in the main, always will take for 
its material the means of expression ; and by preference it 
chooses a tongue not vulgar or " understanded of the people." 
Thus the schoolmasters with Sturm at their head set them- 
selves to teach words — foreign words, and allowed their 
pupils to study nothing else, not even the mother tongue. 
The satirist who wrote Hudibras has stated for us the result — 
*' No sooner are the organs of the brain 

Quick to receive and stedfast to retain 

Best knowledges, but all's laid out upon 

Retrieving of the curse of Babylon. 

• « « « A 

And he that is but able to express 

No sense in several languages 

Will pass for learneder than he that's known 

To speak the strongest reason in his own."* 

* " On Abuse of Human Learning," by Samuel Butler. 



STURMIUS. 31 



Resulting verbalism. 



§ 1 1. One of the scholars of the Renascence, Hieronymus 
Wolf, was wise enough to see that there might be no small 
merit in a boy's silence : " Nee minima pueri virtus est 
tacere cum recte loqui nesciat" (Quoted by Parker), But 
this virtue of silence was not encouraged by Sturm, and he 
determined that by the age of sixteen his pupils should 
have a fair command of expression in Latin and some know- 
ledge of Greek.* Latin indeed was to supplant the mother 
tongue, and boys were to be severely punished for using 
their own language. By this we may judge of the pernicious 
effects of following Sturm. And it is a mistake to suppose 
that the unwisdom of tilting at the vernacular was not so 
much Sturm's, as of the age in which he lived. The typical 
English schoolmaster of the century, Mulcaster, was in this 
and many other ways greatly in advance of Sturm. To him 
it was plain that we should "care for that most which we 
ever use most, because we need it most."t The only need 
recognized by Sturm was need of the classical languages. 
Thus he and his admirers led the unlucky schoolboy 
straight into that " slough of Despond " — verbalism, in which 
he has struggled ever since ; 

" Plunged for some sense, but found no bottom there, 
So learned and floundered on in mere despair. "+ 

• Multum ilium profecisse arbitror, qui ante sextum decimum setatis 
annum facultatem duarum linguarum mediocrem assecutus est. (Quoted 
by Parker.) 

t R. Mulcaster's Positions, 1581, p. 30. I have reprinted this book 
(IvOngmans, 18SS, price \os.). 

X Sturm's school "had an European reputation: there were Poles 
and Portuguese, Spaniards, Danes, Italians, French and English. But 
besides this, it was the model and mother school of a numerous progeny. 
Sturm himself organized schools for several towns which applied to him. 



32 STURMIUS. 



Some books about Sturm. 



His disciples became organizers, rectors, and professors. In short, if 
Melanchthon was the instructor, Sturm was the schoolmaster .|f 
Germany. Together with his method, his school-books were spread 
broadcast over the land. Both were adopted by Ascham in England, 
and by Buchanan in Scotland. Sturm himself was a great man at the 
imperial court. No diplomatist passed through Strasburg without 
stopping to converse with him. He drew a pension from the King of 
Denmark, another from the King of France, a third from the Queen 
of England, collected political information for Cardinal Granvella, and 
was ennobled by Charles V. He helped to negotiate peace between 
France and England, and was appointed to confer with a commission of 
Cardinals on reunion of the Church. In short, Sturm knew what he 
was about as well as most men of his time. Yet few will be disposed 
to accept his theory of education, even for the sixteenth century, as the 
best. WTierein then lay the mistake ? . . . Sturm asserted that the 
proper end of school education is eloquence, or in modern phrase, a 
masterly command of language, and that the knowledge of things 
mainly belongs to a later stage . . . Sturm assumed that Latin is 
the language in which eloquence is to be acquired." 

This is from Mr. Charles Stuart Parker's excellent account of Sturm in 
Essays on a Liberal Educaticn, edited by Farrar, Essay L, On History 
of Classical Education, p. 39. 

I find from Herbart {^Pdd. Schriften, O. Wilmann's edition, vol. ij, 
229 ff; Beyer's edition, ij, 321) that the historian, F. H. Ch. Schwarz, 
took a very favourable view of Sturm's work ; and both he and Karl 
Schmidt give Sturm credit for introducing the two ways of studying an 
author that may be carried on at the same time — ist, statarisch, i.e., 
reading a small quantity accurately, and 2nd, cursorisck, i.e., getting 
over the ground. These two kinds of reading were made much of by 
J. M. Gesner (1691-1761). Ernst Laas hzs ytriUen Die Fddago^ik /, 
Sturms which no doubt does him justice, but I have not seen the bock. 



IV. 

SCHOOLS OF THE JESUITS. 



§ I. Since the Revival of Learning, no body of men has 
played so prominent a part in education as the Jesuits. 
With characteristic sagacity and energy they soon seized on 
education as a stepping-stone to power and influence; and 
with their talent for organization, they framed a system of 
schools which drove all important competitors from the field, 
and made Jesuits the instructors of Catholic, and even, to 
some extent, of Protestant Europe. Their skill in this 
capacity is attested by the highest authorities, by Bacon* 
and by Descartes, the latter of whom had himself been their 
pupil ; and it naturally met with its reward : for more than 



* Why did Bacon, who spoke sh'ghtingly of Sturm (see Parker, io 
.Essays on Lib. Ed.), rate the Jesuits so highly? " Consule scholas 
Jesuitarum : nihil enim quod in usum venit his melius," De Aug., lib. 
iv, cap. iv. See, too, a longer passage in first book oi De Aug. (about 
end of first ^), " Quae nobilissima pars priscse disciplinas revocata est 
aliquatenus, quasi postliminio, in Jesuitarum collegiis ; quorum cum 
tntueor industriam solertiamque tam in doctrina excolenda quam in 
moribus informandis, illud occurrit Agesilai de Pharnabazo, ' Talis 
cum sis, utinam noster esses. 

E 



34 THE JESUITS. 



Importance of the Jesuit Schools. 

one hundred years nearly all the foremost men throughout 
Christendom, both among the clergy and laity, had received 
the Jesuit training, and in most cases retained for life an 
attachment to their old masters. 

§ 2. About these Jesuit schools — once so celebrated and 
so powerful, and still existing in great numbers, though 
little remains of their original importance— there does not 
seem to be much information accessible to the English 
reader. I have, therefore, collected the following particulars 
about them ; and refer any one who is dissatisfied with so 
meagre an account, to the works which I have consulted.* 
The Jesuit schools, as I said, still exist, but they did their 



* (i) Joseph Anton Schmid's "Niedere Schulen derjesuiten :"Regens- 
burg, 1852. (2) Article by Wagenmann in K. A. Schmid's ** Encyclo- 
padie des Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesens." (3) " Ratio atque 
Institutio Studiorum Soc. Jesu." The first edition of this work, 
published at Rome in 1585, was suppressed as heretical, because it 
contemplated the possibility of differing from St. Thomas Aquinas. The 
book is now very scarce. There is a copy in the British Museum. 
On comparing it with the folio edition ("Constitutiones," &c., pub- 
lished at Prag in 1632), I find many omissions in the latter, some of 
which are curious, e.g., under " De Matrimonio :" — " Matremne an 
uxorem occidere sit gravius, non est hujus loci." (4) " Parseresis ad 
Magistros Scholarum Inferiorum Soc. Jesu, scripta a P. Francisco 
Sacchino, ex eadem Societate." (5) " Juvencius de Ratione Discendi 
et Docendi." Cretineau-Joly's " Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus" 
(Paris, 1844), I have not made much use of. Sacchini and Jouvency 
were both historians of the Order. The former died in 1625, the latter 
in 1719. There is a good sketch of the Jesuit schools, by Andrewes, in 
Barnard's Americmi Journal of Education, vol. xiv, 1864, reprinted 
in the best book I know of in English on the History of Education, 
Barnard's German 7 eachers. 



THE JESUITS. 35 



Society in part educational. 



great work in other centuries; and I therefore prefer to 
speak of them as things of the past.* 

§ 3. When the Jesuits were first formally recognized by 
a Bull of Paul III in 1540, the Bull stated that the Order 
was formed, among other things, " especially for the purpose 
of instructing boys and ignorant persons in the Christian 
religion." But the Society well understood that secular was 
more in demand than religious learning ; and they offered 
the more valued instruction, that they might have the 
opportunity of inculcating lessons which, to the Society at 
le?.st, were the more valuable. From various Popes they 
obtained powers for founding schools and colleges, for giving 
degrees, and for lecturing publicly at universities. Their 
foundations rapidly extended in the Romance countries, 
except in France, where they were long in overcoming the 
opposition of the Regular clergy and of the University of 
Paris. Over the Teutonic and Slavonic countries they 
spread their influence first by means of national colleges at 
Rome, where boys of the different nations were trained as 
missionaries. But, in time, the Jesuits pushed their camps 
forward, even into the heart of the enemy's country. 

§ 4. The system of education to be adopted in all the 
Jesuit institutions was settled during the Generalship of 
Aquaviva. In 1584 that General appointed a School 
Commission, consisting of six distinguished Jesuits from the 
various countries of Europe. These spent nearly a year in 
Rome, in study and consultation ; and the fruit of their 



* "L'execution des d^cretsde 1880 a eu pour resultat la fermeturede 
leurs colleges. Mais malgr^ leur dispersion apparente ils sont encore 
plus puissants qu'on ne le croit, et ce serait une erreur de penser que le 
dernier mot est dit avec eux." — Compayre, in Buisson, ij, p. 1420. 



^6 THE JESUITS. 

"Ratio atque Institutio." Societas ProfessA. 



labours was the ground-work of the Ratio utijue jnstitiilio 
Sticdiorum Societatis Jesu. This, however, did su: take Us 
final form till twelve other commissioners had been at 
work upon it. It was then (1599) revised and approved 
by Aquaviva and the Fifth and Sixth General Assemblies. 
By this code the Jesuit schools were governed till 1832, 
when the curriculum was enlarged so as to include physical 
science and modern languages. 

§ 5. The Jesuits who formed the Societas F/\/essa, i.e., 
those who had taken all the vows, had spent from fifteen 
to eighteen years in preparation, viz., two years as novices 
and one as approved scholars, during which they were 
engaged chiefly in religious exercises, three years in the 
study of philosophy and mathematics, four years of tht;ology, 
and, in the case of the more distinguished stud.'nts, two 
years more in repetition and private theological study. At 
some point in this course, mostly after the pliilosophy, the 
students were sent, for a while, to teach the "lower studies" 
to boys.* The method of teaching was to be icnrnt in the 



* According to the article in K. A. Schmid's "En^.c.- .; e," the 
usual course was this — the two years' novitiate was over hy i)ie time the 
youth was between fifteen and seventeen. He then entered a Jesuit 
college as Scholasticus. Here he learnt literature and rhetoric for two 
years, and then philosophy (with mathemaiics) for three more. He then 
entered on his Regency, i.e., he went over the same ground as a teacher, 
for from four to six years. Then followed a period of Iheol'xncal study, 
ending with a year of trial, called the Tertiorat. The c.iiididate A^as 
now admitted to Priest's Orders, and took the vows either as proftsnis 
quatuor vofontm, professed father of four vows, or as a coadjutor. If he 
was then sent back to teach, he gave only the higher instruction. The 
fourth vow placed him at the disposal of the I'ope. 



THE JESUITS. 37 

Tlie Jesuit teacher: his preparation, &c. 

training schools, called Juvenats,* one of which was founded 
in each province. 

Few, even of the most distinguished students, received 
dispensation from giving elementary instruction. Salmeron 
and Bobadilla performed this duty in Naples, Lainez in 
Florence, Borgia (who had been Viceroy of Catalonia) in 
Cordova, Canisius in Cologne. 

§ 6. During the»time the Jesuit held his post as teacher 
he was to give himself up ^entirely to the work. His 
private studies were abandoned ; his religious exercises 
shortenei-i He began generally with the boys in the lowest 
form, an'i that he might be able to study the character of 
his pupils he went up the school with them, advancing a 
step every year, as in the system now common in Scotland. 
But some forms were always taught, as the highest is in 
Scotland, by the same master, who remained a teacher for 
life. 

§ 7. Great care was to be taken that the frequent changes 
in the staff of masters did not lead to alteration in the 
condu^i" of the school. Each teacher was bound to carry 
on the established instruction by the established methods. 
All b nal peculiarities and opinions were to be as 



* Kai ! :It (Gesch. d. Pad., iij. 199, 200), says that however much 

teachers were wanted, a tsvo years' course of preparation was considered 
indispensable. When the Novitiate was over the candidate became a 
"Junior " (Ca/ZzV^ " Juveniste"). He then continued his studies ?'» 
Uteris huniuuioribus, preparatory to teaching. When in the "Juvenat" 
or "Juriii ate" he had rubbed up his classics and mathematics, he 
entereil tlie " Seminary," and two or three times a week he expounded 
to a class the raatterofthe previous lecture, and answered questions, 
&c. For tbib information I am indebted to the courtesy of Father Eyra 
(S. J.), ofStc:r!iurst. 



38 THE JESUITS. 



Supervision. Maintenance. Lower Schools. 

much as possible suppressed. To secure this a rigid system 
of supervision was adopted, and reports were furnished by 
each officer to his immediate superior. Over all stood the 
General of the Order. Next came the Provincial, appointed 
by the General. Over each college was the Rector, v,ho 
was appointed (for three years) by the General, though he 
was responsible to the Provincial, and made his reports to 
him. Next came the Prefect of Studies, appointed, not by 
the Rector, but by the Provincial. The teachers were 
carefully watched both by the Rector and the Prefect of 
Studies, and it was the duty of the latter to visit each 
teacher in his class at least once a fortnight, to hear him 
teach. The other authorities, besides the masters of classes, 
were usually a House Prefect, and Monitors selected from 
the boys, one in each form. 

§ 8. The school or college was to be built and maintained 
by gifts and bequests which the Society might receive for 
this purpose only. Their instruction was always given 
gratuitously. When sufficient funds were raised to support 
the officers, teachers, and at least twelve scholars, no effort 
was to be made to increase them ; but if they fell short of 
this, donations were to be sought by begging from house to 
house. Want of money, however, was not a difficulty which 
the Jesuits often experienced. 

§ 9. The Jesuit education included two courses of study, 
stadia superiora et infcriora. In the smaller colleges only the 
studiainferioraviere carried on ; and it is to these loiver school t 
that the following account mainly refers. The boys usually 
began this course at ten years old and ended it at sixteen.* 

* So says Andrewes (American fcnirnal of Education), but other 
authorities put the age of entrance as high as fourteen. The stua'ia 
tuperiora were begun before twenty-foui. 



THE JESUITS. 39 



Free instruction. Equality. Boarders. 

§ lo. The pupils in the Jesuit colleges were of two kinds : 
ist, those who were training for the Order, and had passed 
the Novitiate ; 2nd, the externs, who were pupils merely. 
When the building was not filled by the first of these (the 
Scholastic!, or JVostri, as they are called in the Jesuit 
writings), other pupils were taken in to board, who had to 
pay simply the cost of their living, and not even this unless 
they could well afford it. Instruction, as I said, was 
gratuitous to all. " Gratis receive, gratis give," was the 
Society's rule ; so they would neither make any charge for 
instruction, nor accept any gift that was burdened with 
conditions. 

§ II. Faithful to the tradition of the Catholic Church, 
the Society did not estimate a man's worth simply according 
to his birth and outward circumstances. The Constitutions 
expressly laid down that poverty and mean extraction were 
never to be any hindrance to a pupil's admission ; and 
Sacchini says : " Do not let any favouring of the higher 
classes interfere with the care of meaner pupils, since the 
birth of all is equal in Adam, and the inheritance in 
Christ."* 

§ 12. The externs who could not be received into the 
building were boarded in licensed houses, which were always 
liable to an unexpected visit from the Prefect of Studies. 

§ 13. The "lower school" was arranged in five classes 
(sinr.e increased to eight), of which the lowest usually had 
tw;; divisions. Parallel classes were formed wherever the 
number of pupils was too great for five masters. The 
names given to the several divisions were as follows : 



* " Non gratia nobilium officiat culturse vulgarium : cum sint natalea 
omnium pares in Adam et h'Breditates quoque pares in Christo." 



40 THE JESUITS. 



Classes. Curriculum. Latin only used. 

1. Infima -s 

2. Media > Classis Grammaticse. 

3. Suprema ) 

4. Humanitas. 

5. Rhetorica. 

Each was "absolved " in a year, except Rhetoiica, which 
required two years (Stockl, p. 237). 

Jesuits and Protestants alike in the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries thought of Httle but literary instruction, and 
that too connected only with Latin and Greek. The 
subject-matter of the teaching in the Jesuit schools was to 
be " praeter Grammaticam, quod ad Rhetoricam, Poesim et 
Historiam pertinet," in addition to Grammar, whatever 
related to Rhetoric, Poetry, and History. Reading and 
writing the mother-tongue might not be taught without 
special leave from the Provincial. Latin was as much 
as possible to supersede all other languages, even in 
speaking ; and nothing else might be used by the pupils 
in the higher forms on any day but a holiday.* To gain 
a supply of Latin words for ordinary use, the pupils com- 
mitted to memory Latin conversations on general topics, 
such as Francis Pomey's " Indiculus Universalis " and " Col- 
loquia Scholastica." 

§ 14. Although many good school-books were written by 
the Jesuits, a great part of their teaching was given orally. 
The master was, in fact, a lecturer, who expounded some- 
times a piece of a Latin or Greek author, sometimes the 



• Even junior masters were not to be much addicted to their own 
language. " Illud cavendum imprimis juniori magistro ne vernaculis 
nimium libris indulgeat, pniesertim poetis, in quibus maximam temporis 
ac fortasse morum jacturam ia.CQxci."—Jouve}uy. 



THE JESUITS. 41 



Teacher Lectured. Exercises. Saying by heart 

rules of grammar. The pupils were required to get up the 
substance of these lectures, and to learn the grammar-rules 
and parts of the classical authors by heart. The master 
for his part had to bestow great pains on the preparation of 
his lectures.* 

§ 15. Written exercises, translations, &c., were given in 
on every day, except Saturday ; and the master had, if 
possible, to go over each one with its writer and his 
appointed rival or cemulus. 

§ 16. The method of hearing the rules, &c., committed 
to memory was this : — Certain boys in each class, who were 
called Decurions, repeated their tasks to the master, and 
then in his presence heard the other boys repeat theirs. 
The master meanwhile corrected the written exercises, t 

* " Multum proderit si magister non tumultuario ac subito dicat, sed 
quae domi cogitate scripserit. — It will be a great gain if the master does 
not speak in a hurry and without forethought, but is ready with what 
he has thought out and written out in his own room." — Ratio Sttidd.^ 
quoted by Schmid. And Sacchini says : " Ante omnia, quae quisque 
docturus est, egregie calleat. Turn enim bene docet, et facile docet, et 
libenter docet ; bene, quia sine errore ; facile, quia sine labore ; 
libenter, quia ex pleno . . . Memorise minimum fidat : instauret 
earn refricetque iterata lectione antequam quicquam doceat, etiamsi idem 
ssepe docuerit. Occurret non raro quod addat vel commodius proponat. 
— Before all things let everyone be thoroughly skilled in what he is 
going to teach ; for then he teaches well, he teaches easily, he teaches 
readily : well, because he makes no mistakes ; easily, because he has 
no need to exert himself; readily, because, like wealthy men he 
cares not how he gives. . . . Let him be very distrustful of his 
memory ; let him renew his remembrance and rub it up by repeated 
reading before he teaches anything, though he may have often taught it 
before. Something will now and then occur to him which he may add, 
or put more neatly." 

t In a school (not belonging to the Jesuits) where this plan was 
idopted, the boys, by an ingenious contrivance, managed to make it 



42 THE JESUITS. 

Emulation. "JEmuli." Concertations. 

§ 17. One of the leading peculiarities in the Jesuits' 
system was the pains they took to foster emulation — " cotem 
ingenii puerilis, calcar industrise — the whetstone of talent, 
the spur of industry." For this purpose all the boys in the 
lower part of the school were arranged in pairs, each pair 
being rivals {ccmuli) to one another. Every boy was to be 
constantly on the w^atch to catch his rival tripping, and was 
immediately to correct him. Besides this individual rivalry, 
every class was divided into two hostile camps, called 
Rome and Carthage, which had frequent pitched battles of 
questions on set subjects. These were the " Concertations," 
in which the boys sometimes had to put questions to the 
opposite camp, sometimes to expose erroneous answers when 
the questions were asked by the master* (see Appendix : 
Class Matches, p. 529). Emulation, indeed, was en- 
couraged to a point where, as it seems to me, it must have 
endangered the good feeling of the boys among themselves. 
Jouvency mentions a practice of appointing mock defenders 
of any particularly bad exercise, who should make the 
author of it ridiculous by their excuses ; and any boy whose 
work was very discreditable, was placed on a form by him- 
self, with a daily punishment, until he could show that some 
one deserved to change places with him. 

§ 18. In the higher classes a better kind of rivalry was 

work very smoothly. The boy who was " hearing " the lessons held 
the book upside down in such a way that the others read instead of 
repeating by heart. The masters finally interfered with this arrange- 
ment. 

* Since the above was written, an account of these concertations has 
appeared in the Rev. G. R. Kingdon's evidence before the Schools 
Commission, 1867 (vol. v, Answers 12,228 fif.)- Mr. Kingdon, the 
Prefect of Studies at Stonyhurst, mentions that the side which wins 
in most concertations gets an extra half-holiday. 



THE JESUITS. 43 



"Academies." Expedients. School-hours. 

cultivated by means of " Academies," i.e., voluntary associa- 
tions for study, which met together, under the superintendence 
of a master, to read themes, translations, «&:c., and to discuss 
passages from the classics. The new members were sleeted 
by the old, and to be thus elected was a much-coveted 
distinction. In these Academies the cleverer students got 
practice for the disputations, which formed an important 
part of the school work of the higher classes. 

§ 19. There was a vast number of other expedients by 
which the Jesuits sought to work on their pupils' a??iour 
propre, such as, on the one hand, the weekly publication of 
offences per prceconem, and, on the other, besides prizes 
(which could be won only by the externs), titles and badges 
of honour, and the like. "There are," says Jouvency, 
" hundreds of expedients of this sort, all tending to sharpen 
the boys' wits, to lighten the labour of the master, and to 
free him from the invidious and troublesome necessity of 
punishing." 

§ 20. The school-hours were remarkably short : two 
hours and a half in the morning, and the same in the after- 
noon ; with a whole holiday a week in summer, and a half 
holiday in winter. The time was spent in the first form 
after the following manner : — During the first half-hour the 
master corrected the exercises of the previous day, while the 
Decurions heard the lesson which had been learnt by heart. 
Then the master heard the piece of Latin which he had 
explained on the previous day. With this construing, was 
connected a great deal of parsing, conjugating, declining, &c. 
The teacher then explained the piece for the following day, 
which, in this form, was never to exceed four lines. The 
last half-hour of the morning was spent in explaining 
grammar. This was done very slowly and carefully : in thu 



44 THE JESUITS. 



Method of teaching. An example. 

words of the Ratio Studd. : " Pluribus diebus fere singula 
prsecepta inculcanda sunt" — "Generally take a single rule and 
drive it in, several days." For the first hour of the alter- 
noon the master corrected exercises, and the boys learnt 
grammar. If there was time, the master put questions 
about the grammar he had explained in the morning. The 
second hour was taken up with more explanations of 
grammar, and the school closed with half an hour's concer- 
tation, or the master corrected the notes which the pupils 
had taken during the day. In the other forms, the work 
was vei7 similar to this, except that Greek was added, and 
also in the higher classes a little mathematics. 

§ 21. It will be observed from the above account, that 
almost all the strength of the Jesuit teaching was thrown 
into the study of the Latin language, which was to be used, 
not only for reading, but also in writing and speaking. But 
under the name of " erudition " some amount of instruction 
in other subjects, especially in history and geography, was 
given in explaining, or rather lecturing on, the classical 
authors. Jouvency says that this lecture must consist of the 
following parts : — ist, the general meaning of the whole 
passage ; 2nd, the explanation of each clause, both as to the 
meaning and construction ; 3rd, any information, such as 
accounts of historical events, or of ancient manners and 
customs, which could be connected with the text ; 4th, in 
the higher forms, applications of the rules of rhetoric and 
poetry ; 5th, an examination of the Latinity ; 6th, the incul- 
cation of some moral lesson. This treatment of a subject 
he illustrates by examples. Among these is an account of 
a lesson for the first {i.e., lowest) class in the Fable of the 
Fox and the Mask : — ist, comes the argument and the 
explanation of words ; 2nd, the grammar and parsing, as 



THE JESUITS. 45 



Attention. Extra work. "Repetitio." 

vulpes, a substantive of the third declension, &c., h'ke 
proles, eludes. Sic. (here the master is always to give among 
his examples some which the boys already know) ; 3rd, 
comes the eruditio — something about foxes, about tragedy, 
about the brain, and hence about other parts of the 
head ; 4th, Latinity, the order of the words, choice of the 
words, synonyms, &c. Then the sentences may be parodied ; 
other suitable substantives may be found for the adjectives 
and vice versa; and every method is to be adopted of 
showing the boys how to use the words they have learnt. 
Lastly, comes the moral. 

§ 22. The practical teacher will be tempted to ask, How 
is the attention of the class to be kept up whilst all this 
information is given ? This the Jesuits did partly by punish- 
ing the inattentive. Every boy was subsequently required 
to reproduce what the teacher had said, and to show his 
written notes of it. But no doubt this matter of attention 
was found a difficulty. Jouvency tells the teachers to 
break off from time to time in their lectures, and to ask 
questions ; and he adds : " Variae sunt artes excitandae 
attentionis quas docebit usus et sua cuique industria sug- 
geret. — Very various are the devices for arousing attention. 
These will occur with practice and pains." 

For private study, besides written exercises and learning 
by heart, the pupils were recommended subjects to get up 
in their own time ; and in this, and also as to the length of 
some of the regular lessons, they were permitted to decide 
for themselves. Here, as everywhere, the Jesuits trusted to 
the sense of honour and emulation — those who did extra 
work were praised and rewarded. 

§ 23. One of the maxims of this system was : "Repetitio 
neater studiorum." Every lesson was connected with tv/o 



46 THE JESUITS. 



Repetition. Thoroughness. 

repetitions — one before it began, of preceding work, and the 
other at the close, of the work just done. Besides this, one 
day a week was devoted entirely to repetition. In the three 
lowest classes the desire of laying a solid foundation even 
led to the second six months in the year being given to 
again going over the work of the first six months.* By this 
means boys of extraordinary ability could pass through these 
forms in eighteen months, instead of three years. 

§ 23. Thoroughness in work was the one thing insisted 
on. Sacchini says that much time should be spent in going 
over the more important things, which are " veluti multorum 
fontes et capita (as it were the sources and starting points of 
many others) " ; and that the master should prefer to teach a 
few things perfectly, to giving indistinct impressions of many 
things.! We should remember, however, that the pupils of 
the Jesuits were not children. Subjects such as grammar 
cannot, by any expenditure of time and trouble, be perfectly 
taught to children, because children cannot perfectly under- 
stand them ; so that the Jesuit thoroughness is not always 
attainable. 

§ 24. The usual duration of the course in the lower 
schools was six years — i.e., one year in each of the four 



* "The grinding over and over of a subject after pupils have attained a 
fair knowledge of it, is nothing less than stultifying — killing out 
curiosity and the desire of knowledge, and begetting mechanical habits." 
— Supt. J. Hancock, Dayton, Ohio. Every teacher of experience knowi 
how true this is. 

t " Stude potius ut pauciora clare distincteque percipiant, quam 
obscure atque confuse pluribus imbuantur. — Care rather for their see- 
ing a few things vividly and definitely, than that they should get filled 
with hazy and confusing notions of many things." (There are few 
more valuable precepts for the teacher than this.) 



THE JESUITS. 47 

Yearly examinations. Moral training. 

lower classes, and two years in the highest class. Every 
year closed with a very formal examination. Before this 
examination took place, the pupils had lessons in the manner 
of it, so that they might come prepared, not only with a 
knowledge of the subjects, but also of the laws of writing for 
examination ("scribendiad examen leges"). The examina- 
tion was conducted by a commission appointed for the 
purpose, of which commission the Prefect of Studies was an 
ex officio member. The masters of the classes, though they 
were present, and could make remarks, were not of the 
examining body. For the viva voce the boys were ushered 
in, three at a time, before the solemn conclave. The results 
of the examination, both written and verbal, were joined 
with the records of the work done in the past year ; and the 
names of those pupils who had distinguished themselves 
were then published in order of merit, but the poll was 
arranged alphabetically, or according to birthplace. 

§ 25. As might be expected, the Jesuits were to be very 
careful of the moral and religious training of their pupils. 
"Quam maxime in vitse probitate ac bonis artibus doctrinaque 
proficiant ad Dei gloriam." {Ratio Studd., quoted by Schmid.) 
And Sacchini tells the master to remember how honourable 
his office is ; as it has to do, not with grammar only, but 
also with the science and practice of a Christian and religious 
life: "atque eo quidem ordine ut ipsa ingenii eruditio sit 
expolitio morum, et humana literatura divinae ancilletur 
sa\uentiae."* 

* Sacchini writes in a very high tone on this subject. The following 
passage is striking : *' Gravitatem sui muneris summasque opportuni- 
tates assidue animo verset (magister). . . . ' Puerilis institutio 
mundi renovatio est ;' hsec gymnasia Dei castra sunt, hie bonorum om- 
nium semina latent. Video solum fundamentumque republicse quod 



48 THE JESUITS. 



Care of health. Punishments. 



Each lesson was to begin with prayer or the sign of the 
Cross. The pupils were to hear Mass every morning, and 
were to be urged to frequent confession and receiving of the 
Holy Communion. The Father Confessor was always a 
Jesuit, but he was not a master in the school. 

§ 26. The bodily health also was to be carefully attended 
to. The pupils were not to study too much or too long 
at a time. Nothing was to be done for a space of from one 
or two hours after dinner. On holidays excursions were 
made to farms in the country,* 

§ 27. Punishments were to be as light as possible, and 
the master was to shut his eyes to offences whenever he 
thought he might do so with safety. Grave offences were to 
be visited with corporal punishment, performed by a 
"corrector," who was not a member of the Order. Where this 
chastisement did not have a good effect, the pupil was to be 
expelled.! 

multi non videant interpositu terras. — Let the mind of the master dwell 
upon the responsibilities of his office and its immense opportunities. 

. . . The education of the young is the renovation of the world. 
These schools are the camp of God : in them lie the seeds of all that is 
good. There I see the foundation and ground-work of the common- 
wealth, which many fail to see from its being underground." Perhaps 
he had read of Trotzendorfs address to a school, " Hail reverend 
divines, learned doctors, worshipful magistrates, &c." 

* "Circa illorum valetudinem peculiar! cura animadvertat (Rector) ut 
et in laboribus mentis modum servent, et in iis quae ad corpus perti- 
nent, religiosa commoditate tractentur, ut diutius in studiis perseverare 
tam in litteris addiscendis quam in eisdem exercendis ad Dei gloriam 
possint." — Ratio Studd., quoted by Schmid. See also infra p. 62. 

t The following, from the Ratio Studd., sounds Jesuitical: "Nee 
publice puniant flagitia qusedam secretiora sed privatim ; aut si publice, 
alias obteiidant causas, et satis est cos qui plectuntur consci(js esse 
causarum." 



THE JESUITS. 49 



English want of system. 



§ 28. The dry details into which I have been drawn by 
faithfully copying the manner of the Ratio Studiorn?n may 
seem to the reader to afford no answer to the question 
v/hich naturally suggests itself — To what did the school- 
system of the Jesuits owe its enormous popularity? But in 
part, at least, these details do afford an answer. They 
show us that the Jesuits were intensely practical. The 
jRaiio Studiorutn hardly contains a single principle j but 
what it does is this — it points out a perfectly attainable goal, 
and carefully defines the road by which that goal is to be 
approached. For each class was prescribed not only the work 
to be done, but also the end to be kept in view. Thus 
method reigned throughout — perhaps not the best method, 
as the object to be attained was assuredly not the highest 
object — but the method, such as it was, was applied with 
undeviating exactness. In this particular the Jesuit schools 
contrasted strongly with their rivals of old, as indeed with 
the ordinary school of the present day. The Head Master, 
who is to the modern English school what the General, 
Provincial, Rector, Prefect of Studies, and Ratio Stiidiorum 
combined were to a school of the Jesuits, has perhaps no 
standard in view up to which the boy should have been 
brought when his school course is completed.* The 
masters of forms teach just those portion of their subject in 
which they themselves are interested, in any way that occurs 
to them, with by no means uniform success ; so that when 
two forms are examined with the same examination paper, it 
is no very uncommon occurrence for the lower to be found 



* As the Public Schools Commission pointed out, the Head Master 
often thinks of nothing but the attainment of University honouis, even 
when the great majority of his pupils art not going to the University. 



50 THE JESUITS. 



Jesuit limitations. 



superior to the higher. It is, perhaps, to be expected that a 
course in which uniform method tends to a definite goal would 
on the whole be more successful than one in which a boy has 
to accustom himself by turns to half-a-dozen different 
methods, invented at haphazard by individual masters with 
different aims in view, if indeed they have any aim at all. 

§ 29. I have said that the object which the Jesuits pro- 
posed in their teaching was not the highest object. They 
did not aim at developing all the faculties of their pupils, 
but mainly the receptive and reproductive faculties. When 
the young man had acquired a thorough mastery of the 
Latin language for all purposes, when he was well versed in 
the theological and philosophical opinions of his preceptors, 
when he was skilful in dispute, and could make a brilliant 
display from the resources of a well-stored memory, he had 
reached the highest point to which the Jesuits sought to lead 
him.* Originality and independence of mind, love of truth 

* The advantages of learning by heart are twofold, says Sacchini : 
" Primum memoriam ipsam perficiunt, quod est in totam setatem ad uni- 
versa negotia inaestimabile commodum. Deinde suppellectilem inde 
pulcherrimam congregant verborum ac rerum : quae item, quamdiu vi- 
vant, Usui futura sit : cum quse astate ilia insederint indelebilia soleant 
permanere. Magnam itaque, ubi adoleverint, gratiam Prasceptori ha- 
bebunt, cui memorise debebunt profectum, magnamque lastitiam capient 
invenientes quodammodo domi thesaurum quern, in aetate cseteroqui 
parum fructuosa, prope non sentientes pararint. Enim vero quam sspe 
viros graves atque preestantes magnoque jam natu videre et audire est, 
dum in docta ac nobili corona jucundissime quredam promunt ex iis 
quDe pueri condiderunt ? — First, they strengthen the memory itself and 
so gain an inestimable advantage in affairs of every kind throughout life. 
Then they get together by this means the fairest furniture for the mind, 
both of thoughts and words, a stock that will be of use to them as long 
as they live, since that which settles in the mind in youth mostly stays 
there. And when the lads h.ive grown up they will feel gratitude to 



THE JESUITS. 51 

Gains from memorizing. 

for its own sake, the power of reflecting, and of forming 
correct judgments were not merely neglected — they were 
suppressed in the Jesuits' system. But in what they attempted 
they were eminently successful, and their success went a 
long way towards securing their popularity.* 

the master to whom- they are indebted for their good memory ; and they 
v.ill take delight in finding within them a treasure which at a time of 
life otherwise unfruitful they have been preparing almost without know- 
ing it. How often we see and hear eminent men far advanced in life, 
when in learned and noble company, take a special delight in quoting what 
they stored up as boys !" The master, he says, must point out to his 
pupils the advantages we derive from memory ; that we only know and 
possess that which we retain, that this cannot be taken from us, but is 
with us always and is always ready for use, a living librarj', which may 
be studied even in the dark. Boys should therefore be encouraged to 
run over in their minds, or to say aloud, what they have learnt, as often 
as opportunity offers, as when they are walking or are by themselves : 
" Ita numquam in otio futures otiosos ; ita minus fore solos cum soli 
erunt, consuetudine fruentes sapientum. . . . Denique curandum 
erit ut selecta qujedam ediscant quae deinde in quovis studiorum genere 
ac vita fere omni usui sint futura. — So they will never be without em- 
ployment when unemployed, never less alone than when alone, for then 
they profit by intercourse with the wise. . . . To sum up, take care 
that they thoroughly commit to memory choice selections which will foi 
ever after be of use to them in every kind of study, and nearly every 
pursuit in life. — (Cap. viij. ) This is interesting and well put, but we see 
one or two points in which we have now made an advance. Learning 
by heart will give none of the advantages mentioned unless the boys 
understand the pieces and delight in them. Learning by heart 
strengthens, no doubt, a faculty, but nothing large enough to be called 
" the memory." And the Renascence must indeed have blinded the eyes 
of the man to whom childhood and youth seemed an "setas parum 
fiuctuosa"! Similarly, Sturm speaks of the small fry "qui in extremis 
latent classibus." (Quoted by Parker.) But when Pestalozzi and 
Froebel came these lay hid no longer. 

* Ranke, speaking of the success of the Jesuit schools, says : " It 



52 THE JESUITS. 



Popularity. Kindness. 



§ 30. Their popularity was due, moreover, to the means 
employed, as well as to the result attained. The Jesuit 
teachers were to lead, not drive their pupils, to make theii 
learning, not merely endurable, but even acceptable, " dis- 
ciplinam non modo tolerabilem, sed etiain amabilem." 
Sacchini expresses himself very forcibly on this subject. 
" It is," says he, " the unvarying decision of wise men, 
whether in ancient or modern times, that the instruction 
of youth will be always best when it is pleasantest : whence 
this application of the word Indus. The tenderness of 
youth requires of us that we should not overstrain it, its 
innocence that we should abstain from harshness. . . . 
That which enters into willing ears the mind as it were 
runs to welcome, seizes with avidity, carefully stows away, 
and faithfully preserves."* The pupils were therefore to be 
encouraged in every way to take kindly to their learning. 
With this end in view (and no doubt other objects also), 

was found that young persons learned more under them in half a year 
than with others in two years. Even Protestants called back their 
children from distant schools, and put them under the care of the 
Jesuits." — Hist, of Popes , book v, p. 138. Kelly's Trans. 

In France, the University in vain procured an arrit forbidding the 
Parisians to send away their sons to the Jesuit colleges : " "Jesuit schools 
enjoyed the confidence of the public in a degree which placed them 
beyond competition." (Pattison's Casauhon, p. 182.) 

Pattison remarks elsewhere that such was the common notion of the 
Jesuits' course of instruction that their controversialists could treatanyone, 
even a Casaubon, who had not gone through it, as an uneducated person. 

* " Sapientum hoc omnium seu veterum seu recentum constans judi- 
cium est, institutionem puerilem turn fore optimam cum jucundissima 
fuerit, inde enim et ludum vocari. Meretur setatis teneritas ut ne 
oneretur : meretur innocentia ut ei parcatur . . . Quoe libentibus 
auribus instillnntur, adea velut occurrit animus, avide suscipit, studiose 
recondit, fideliter serval." 



THE JESUITS. 53 



Sympathy with each pupil. 



the masters were carefully to seek the boys' affections. 
" When pupils love the master," says Sacchini, " they will 
soon love his teaching. Let him, therefore, show an interest 
in everything that concerns them and not merely in their 
studies. Let him rejoice with those that rejoice, and 
not disdain to weep with those that weep. After the 
example of the Apostle let him become a little one amongst 
little ones, that he may make them adult in Christ, and 
Christ adult in them . . . Let him unite the grave kind- 
ness and authority of a father with a mother's tenderness."* 
§ 31. In order that learning might be pleasant to the 
pupils, it was necessary that they should not be overtasked. 
To avoid this, the master had to study the character and 
capacity of each boy in his class, and to keep a book with 
all particulars about him, and marks from one to six indi- 
cating proficiency. Thus the master formed an estimate 
of what should be required, and the amount varied con- 
siderably with the pupil, though the quality of the work 
was always to be good. 

• " Conciliabit facile studiis quos primum sibi conciliarit. Det itaque 
omnem operam illorum erga se observantionem ut sapienter colligat et 
continenter enutriat. Ostendat, sibi res eorum curse esse non solum 
quae ad animum sed etiam quae ad alia pertinent. Gaudeat cum gau- 
dentibus, nee dedignetur flere cum flentibus. Instar Apostoli inter par- 
vulos parvulus fiat quo magnos in Christo et magnum in eis Christum 
efficiat . . . Seriam comitatem et paternam gravitatem cum 
materna benignitate permisceat." Unfortunately, the Jesuits' kind 
manner loses its value from being due not so much to kind feeling as to 
some ulterior object, or to a rule of the Order. I think it is Jouvency 
who recommends that when a boy is absent from sickness or other 
sufficient reason, the master sh uld send daily to inquire after him, 
because the parents will be pleaied by such attetitioti. When the motive 
of the inquiry is suspected, th parents will be pleased no longer. 



54 THE JESUITS. 



Work moderate in amount and difficulty. 

§ 32. Not only was the work not to be excessive, it was 
never to be of great difficulty. Even the grammar was to 
be made as easy and attractive as possible. " I think it a 
mistake " says Sacchini, " to introduce at an early stage the 
more thorny difficulties of grammar : . . . for when the 
pupils have become familiar with the earlier parts, use will, 
by degrees, make the more difficult clear to them. His 
mind expanding and his judgment ripening as he grows 
older the pupil will often see for himself that which he 
could hardly be made to see by others. Moreover, in 
reading an author, examples of grammatical difficulties will 
be more easily observed in connection with the context, 
and will make more impression on the mind, than if they 
are taught in an abstract form by themselves. Let them 
then, be carefully explained whenever they occur."* 

§ 33. Perhaps no body of men in Europe (the Thugs 
may, in this respect, rival them in Asia) have been so hated 
as the Jesuits. I once heard Frederick Denison Maurice 
say he thought Kingsley could find good in every one 
except the Jesuits, and, he added, he thought he could find 
good even in them. But why should a devoted Christian 
find a difficulty in seeing good in the Jesuits, a body of men 
whose devotion to their idea of Christian duty has never 



* " Errorem existimo statim initio spinosiores quasdam grammaticje 
difficultates inculcare . . . cum enim planioribus insueverint 
difficiliora paulatim usus explanabit, Quin et capacior subinde mensac 
firmius cum setate judicium, quod alio monstrante peracgre unquam 
percepisset per sese non raro intelliget. Exempla quoque talium rerum 
dum prselegilur autor facilius in orationis contextu agnoscentur et 
penetrabunt in animos quam si solitaria et abscissa proponantur. 
Quamobrem faciendum erit ut quoties occurrunt diligenter enu* 
cleentur.' 



THE JESUITS. . 55 



The Society the Army of the Church. 

been surpassed ?* The difficulty arose from differences in 
ideal. Both held that the ideal Christian would do every- 
thing " to the greater glory of God," or as the Jesuits put it 
in their business-like fashion, " A.M.D.G.," {i.e., ad mnjorem 
Dei gloriam). But Maurice 'and Kingsley thought of a 
divine idea for every man. The Jesuits' idea lost sight of the 
individual. Like their enemy, Carlyle, the Jesuits in effect 
worshipped strength, but Carlyle thought of the strength of 
the individual, the Jesuits of the strength of *' the Catholic 
Church." "The Catholic Church" was to them the 
manifested kingdom of God. Everything therefore that 
gave power to the Church tended " A.M.D.G." The Com- 
pany of Jesus was the regular army of the Church, so, 
arguing logically from their premises, they made the glory 
of God and the success of the Society convertible terms. 

§ 34. Thus their conception was a purely military con- 
ception. A commander-in-chief, if he were an ardent patriot 
and a great general, would do all he could to make the army 
powerful. He would care much for the health, morals, and 
training of the soldiers, but always with direct reference to 
the army. He would attend to everything that made a 
man a better soldier; beyond this he would not concern 
himself. In his eyes the army would be everything, and a 
soldier nothing but a part of it, just as a link is only a 
part of a chain. Paulsen, speaking of the Jesuits, says truly 
that no great organization can exist without a root idea. 
The root idea of the army is the sacrifice and annihilation 
of the individual, that the body may be fused together and 



* See, e.g. , marvellous instances of their self-devotion in that most 
interesting book, Francis Parkman's Jesuits in N. America (Boston, 
Little & Co., loth edition, 1876). 



56 THE JESUITS. 



Their pedagogy not disinterested. 

so gain a strength greater than that of any number of indi- 
viduals. Formed on tliis idea the army acts all together and 
in obedience to a single will, and no mob can stand its 
charge. Ignatius Loyola and succeeding Generals took up 
this idea and formed an army for the Church, an army that 
became the wonder and the terror of all men. Never, as 
Compayr^ says, had a body been so sagaciously organized, 
or had wielded so great resources for good and for evil.* 
(See Buisson, ij, 14 19.) 

§ 35. To the English schooLiiaster the Jesuits must 
always be interesting, if for no other reason at least for this — 
that they were so intensely practical. ^'- Les Jesuites ne sont 
pas des pedagogues assez desinteresses pour nous plaire. — The 
Jesuits as schoolmasters," says M. Compayr^, "are not 
disinterested enough for us." (Buisson, sub v. Jesuites, ad f.). 
But disinterested pedagogy is not much to the mind of the 
Englishman. It does not seem to know quite what it would 
be after, and deals in generalities, such as " Education is not 
a means but an end ;" and the end being somewhat indefinite, 
the means are still more wanting in precision. This vague- 

• I have referred to Francis Parkman, who has chronicled the 
marvellous self-devotion and heroism of the Jesuit missionaries in 
Canada. Such a witness may be trusted when he says: "The Jesuit 
was as often a fanatic for his Order as for his faith ; and oftener yet, 
the two fanaticisms mingled in him inextricably. Ardently as he burned 
for the saving of souls, he would have none saved on the Upper Lakes 
except by his brethren and himself. He claimed a monopoly of con- 
version with its attendant monopoly of toil, hardships, and martyrdom. 
Often disinterested for himself, he was inordinately ambitious for the 
great corporate power in which he had merged his own personality ; 
and here lies one of the causes, among many, of the seeming contradic- 
tions which abound in the annals of the Order." — The Discovery of tht 
Great West, by F. Parkman, London, 1869, p. 28. 



THE JESUITS. 57 



Practical. The forces : i. Master's influence. 

ness is what the English master hates. He prefers not to 
"Touble himself about the end. The wisdom of his ancestors 
has settled that, and he can direct his attention to what 
really interests him — the practical details. In this he re- 
sembles the Jesuits. The end has been settled for them by 
their founder. They revel in practical details, in which they 
are truly great, and here we may learn much from them. 
'■'■Ratio applied to studies" says Father Eyre,* "more 
naturally means Method than Principle ; and our Ratio 
Studiorum is essentially a Method or System of teaching 
and learning." Here is a method that has been worked 
uniformly and with singular success for three centuries, and 
can still give a good account of its old rivals. But will it 
hold its own against the late Reformers? As regards intel- 
lectual training the new school seeks to draw out the faculties 
of the young mind by employing them on subjects in which 
it is interested. The Jesuits fixed a course of study which, 
as they frankly recognized, could not be made interesting. 
So they endeavoured to secure accuracy by constant repeti- 
tion, and relied for industry on two motive powers : ist, the 
personal influence of the master; and, 2nd, "the spur of 
industry " — emulation. 

§ 36. To acquire "influence" has ever been the main 
object of the Society, and his devotion to this object makes 
a great distinction between the Jesuit and most other 
instructors. His notion of the task was thus expressed by 
Father Gerard, S. J., at the Educational Conference of 1884 : 
" Teaching is an art amongst arts. To be worthy of the 
nam<^ it must be the work of an individual upon individuals. 
The true teacher must understand, appreciate, and sympa- 

• In a letter dated from Stonyhurst, 22nd April, 1880. 



58 THE JESUITS. 



2. Emulation. 



tbize with those who are committed to him. He must be 
daily discovering what there is (and undoubtedly there is 
something in each of them) capable of fruitful development, 
and contriving how better to get at them and to evoke what- 
ever possibilities there are in them for good." The Jesuit 
master, then, tried to gain influence over the boys and to 
use that influence for many purposes ; to make them work 
well being one of these, but not perhaps the most important. 

§ 37. As for emulation, no instructors have used it so 
elaborately as the Jesuits. In most English schools the 
prizes have no effect whatever except on the first three or 
four boys, and the marking is so arranged that those who 
take the lead in the first few lessons can keep their position 
without much effort. This clumsy system would not suit 
the Jesuits. They often for prize-giving divide a class into 
a number of small groups, the boys in each group being 
approximately equal, and a prize is offered for each group. 
The class matches, too, stimulate the weaker pupils even 
more than the strong. 

§ 38. In conclusion, I will give the chief points of the 
system in the words of one of its advocates and admirers, 
who was himself educated at Stonyhurst : 

, " Let us now try to put together the various pieces of 
this school machinery and study the effect. We have seen 
that the boys have masters entirely at their disposition, not 
only at class time, but at recreation time after supper in the 
night Reading Rooms. Each day they record victory or 
defeat in the recurring exercises or themes upon various 
matters. By the quarterly papers or examinations in com- 
position, for which nine hours are assigned, the order of 
merit is fixed, and this order entails many little privileges 
and precedencies, in chapel, refectory, class room, and 



THE JESUITS. 59 



A pupil's summing'-up. 



elsewhere. Each master, if he , prove a success and his 
health permit, continues to be the instructor of the boj^s 
in his class during the space of six years. ' It is obvious.' 
says Shell, in his account of Stonyhurst, 'that much of a 
boy's acquirements, and a good deal of the character of 
his taste, must have depended upon the individual to whose 
instructions he was thus almost exclusively confined.' And 
in many cases the effects must be a greater interest felt in 
the students by their teachers, a mutual attachment founded 
on long acquaintance, and a rnore thorough knowledge, on 
the part of the master, of the weak and strong points of his 
pupils. Add to the above, the ' rival ' and ' side ' system, 
the effect of challenges and class combats ; of the wearing 
of decorations and medals by the Imperators on Sundays, 
Festival Days, Concertation Days, and Examination Days ; 
of the extraordinary work — done much more as private than 
as class work — helping to give individuality to the boy's 
exertions, which might otherwise be merged in the routine 
work of the class ; and the ' free time ' given for improve- 
ment on wet evenings and after night prayers; add the 
Honours Matter ; the Reports read before the Rector and 
all subordinate Superiors, the Professors, and whole body 
of Students ; add the competition in each class and between 
the various classes, and even between the various colleges in 
England of the Society ; and only one conclusion can be 
arrived at. It is a system which everyori.e is free to admire 
or think inferior to some other preferred by him ; but it is 
a system." {Stonyhurst College, Present and Past, by A. 
Hewitson, 2nd edition, 1878, pp. 214, fif.) 

§ 39. Yes, it is a system, a system built up by the united 
efforts of many astute intellects and showing marvellous 



6o THE JESUITS. 



Some books. 



skill in selecting means to attain a dearly conceived end. 
There is then in the history of education little that should 
be more interesting or might be more instructive to the 
master of an English public school than the chapter abou* 
the Jesuits.* 

* The best account I have seen of life in a Jesuit school is in 
Erinnerungen eines chemaligen Jesuitenzoglings (Leipzig, Brockhaus, 
1S62). The writer (Kohler ?) says that he has become an evangelical 
clergyman, but there is no hostile feeling shown to his old instructors, 
and the narrative bears the strongest internal evidence of accuracy. 
Some of the Jesuit devices mentioned are very ingenious. All house 
masters who have adopted the cubicle arrangement of dormitories know 
how difficult it is to keep the boys in their own cubicles. The Jesuits 
have the cubicles barred across at the top, and the locks on the doors 
are so constructed that though they can be opened from the inside they 
cannot be shut again. The Fathers at Freiburg (in Breisgau) opened a 
" tuck-shop " for the boys, and gave " week's-pay " in counters which 
passed at their own shop and nowhere else. The author speaks 
warmly of the kindness of the Fathers and of their care for health and 
recreation. But their ways were inscrutable and every boy felt himself 
in the hands of a human providence. As the boys go out for a walk, 
one of them is detained by the porter, who says " the Rector wants to 
speak to you." On their way back the boys meet a diligence in which 
sits their late comrade waving adieus. He has been expelled. 

Another book which throws much light on Jesuit pedagogy isby a Jesuit 
— La Discipline, par le R. P. Emmanuel Barbier (Paris, V. Palme, 2nd 
edition, 1888). I will give a specimen in a loose translation, as it may 
interest the reader to see how carefully the Jesuits have studied the 
master's difficulties. . " The master in charge of the boys, especially 
in play-time, in his first intercourse with them, has no greater snare in 
his way than taking his power for granted, and trusting to the strength 
of his will and his knowledge of the world, especially as he is at first 
lulled into security by the deferential manner of his pupils. 

"That master who goes off with such ease from the very first, to whom 
the carrying out of all the rules seems the simplest thing in the world, 
who in the very first hour he is with them has already made himself 



THE JESUITS. 6 1 



Barbier's advice to new master. 

liked, almost popular, with his pupils, who shows no more anxiety 
about his work than he must show to keep his character for good sense, 
that m(..sler is indeed to be pitied ; he is most likely a lost man. He 
will soon have to choose one of two things, either to shut his eyes and 
put up with all the irregularities he thought he had done away with, or 
to break with a past that he would wish forgotten, and engage in open 
conflict with the boys who are inclined to set him at defiance. These 
cases are we trust rare. But many believe with a kind of rash 
ignorance and in spite of the warnings of experience that the good 
feelings of their pupils will work together to maintain their authority. 
They have been told that this authority should be mild and endeared 
by acts of kindness. So they set about crowning the edifice without 
making sure of the foundations ; and taking the title of authority for its 
possession they spend all their efforts in lightening a yoke of which no 
one really bears the weight. 

"In point of fact the first steps often determine the whole course. For 
this reason you will attach extreme importance to what I am now going 
to advise : 

"The chief characteristic in your conduct towards the boys during the 
first few weeks should be an extreme reserve. However far you go in 
this, you can hardly overdo it. So your first attitude is clearly 
defined. 

"You have everything to observe, the individual character of each boy 
and the general tendencies and feelings of the whole body. But be sure 
of one thing, viz. , that you are observed also, and a careful study is made 
both of your strong points and of your weak. Your way of speaking and 
of giving orders, the tone of your voice, your gestures, disclose your 
character, your tastes, your failings, to a hundred boys on the alert to 
pounce upon them. One is summed up long before one has the least 
notion of it. Try then to remain impenetrable. You should never 
give up your reserve till you are master of the situation. 

"For the rest, let there be no affectation about you. Don't attempt to 
put on a severe manner ; answer politely and simply your pupils' 
questions, but let it be in few words, and avoid conversation. All 
depends on that. Let there be no chatting with them in these early 
days. You cannot be too cautious in this respect. Boys have such a 
polite, such a taking way with them in drawing out information about 
your impressions, your tastes, your antecedents ; don't atlempl ihe 



62 THE JESUITS. 



Loyola and Montaigne. Port Royal. 

diplomate ; don't match your skill against theirs. You cannot chat with- 
out coming out of your shell, so to speak. Instead of this, you must 
puzzle them by your reserve, and drive them to this admission : ' We 
don't know what to make of our new master.' 

" Do I advise you then to be on the defensive throughout the whole 
year and like a stranger among your pupils ? No ! a thousand times, 
No ! It is just to make their relations with you simple, confiding, I 
might say cordial, without the least danger to your authority, that I 
endeavour to raise this authority at first beyond the reach of assault." — 
La Discipline, chap, v, pp. 31 ff. 

In this book we see the best side of the Jesuits. They believe in 
their " mission,'' and this belief throws light on many things. Those 
who hate the Jesuits have often extolled the wisdom of Montaigne, when 
he says : " We have not to train up a soul, nor yet a body, but a man; 
and we cannot divide him." Can they see no wisdom in this? " Let 
your mind be filled with the thought that both soul and body have been 
created by the Hand of God : we must account to Him for these two 
parts of our being ; and we are not required to weaken one of them out 
of love for the Creator. We should love the body in the same degree 
that He could love it." This is what Loyola wrote in 1548 to Francis 
Borgia (Compayre, Doctrines, &^f., vol. j, 179). But if we wish to see the 
other side of the Jesuit character, we have only to look at the Jesuit as a 
controversialist. We sometimes see children hiding things and then 
having a pretence hunt for them. The Jesuits are no children, but in 
arguing they pretend to be searching for conclusions which are settled 
before arguments are thought of. See, e.g., the attack on the Port 
Royalists in Les JJsiiites Instituteurs, par le P. Ch. Daniel, 1S80, in 
which the Jesuit sets himself to maintain this thesis : " D'une source 
aussi profondement infectee du poison de I'heresie, il ne pouvait sortir 
rien d' absolument bon " (p. 123). One good point he certainly makes", 
and in my judgment one only, in comparing the Port Royalist schools 
with the schools of Jesuits. Methods which answer with very smyll 
numbers may not do with large numbers: "You might as well try lo 
extend your gardening operations to agriculture " (p. 102). 



V. 

RABELAIS, 

(1483-1553.) 



§ I. To great geniuses it is given to think themselves 
in a measure free from the ordinary notions of their time 
and often to anticipate the discoveries of a future age. In 
all literature there is perhaps hardly a more striking instance 
of this "detached" thinking than we find in Rabelais' 
account of the education of Gargantua. 

§ 2. We see in Rabelais an enthusiasm for learning and 
a tendency to verbal realism ; that is, he turned to the old 
writers for instruction about things. So far he was a child 
of the Renascence. But in other respects he advanced far 
beyond it. 

§ 3. After a scornful account of the ordinary school 
hooks and methods by which Gargantua " though he 
studied hard, did nevertheless profit nothing, but only grew 
thei'iby foolish, simple, doited, and blockish," Rabelais 
decides that "it were better for him to learn nothing at all 
than to be taught suchlike books under suchlike school- 
masters." All this old lumber must be swept away, and in 
two years a youth may acquire a better judgment, a better 



64 RABELAIS. 



Rabelais' ideal. A new start. 



manner, and more command of language than could ever 
have been obtained by the old method. 

We are then introduced to the model pupil. The end 
of education has been declared to be sapiens et eloquen: 
fietas ; and we find that though Rabelais might have sub- 
stituted knowledge for piety, he did caie for piety, and 
valued very highly both wisdom and eloquence. The 
eloquent Roman was the ideal of the Renascence, and 
Rabelais' model pupil expresses himself " with gestures so 
proper, pronunciation so distinct, a voice so eloquent, 
language so well turned and in such good^Latin that he 
seemed rather a Gracchus, a Cicero, an ^milius of the time 
past than a youth of the present age." 

§ 4. So a Renascence tutor is appointed for Gargantua 
and administers to him a potion that makes him forget all 
he has ever learned. He then puts him through a very 
different course. Tike all wise instructors he first endeavours 
to secure the will of the pupil. He allows Gargantua to go 
the accustomed road till he can convince him it is the 
wrong one. This seems to me a remarkable proof of 
wisdom. How often does the " new master " break abruptly 
with the past, and raise the opposition of the pupil by dis- 
praise of all he has already done ! By degrees Ponocrates, 
the model tutor, inspired in his pupil a great desire for 
improvement. This he did by bringing him into the 
society of learned men, who filled him with ambition to be 
like them. Thereupon Gargantua " put himself into such a 
train of study that he lost not any houi in the day, but 
employed all his time in learning and honest knowledge." 
The day was to begin at 4 a.m., with reading of "some 
chapter of the Holy Scripture, and oftentimes he gave 
himself to revere, adore, pray, and send up his supplications 



RABELAIS. 65 



Religion. Study of Things. 



to that good God, whose word did show His majesty and 
marvellous judgments." This is the only hint we get in 
this part of the book on the subject of religious or moral 
education : the training is directed to the intellect and the 
body. 

• § 5. The remarkable feature in Rabelais' curriculum is 
this, that it is concerned mainly with things. Of the Seven 
Liberal Arts of the Middle Ages, the first three were purely 
formal: grammar, logic, rhetoric ; while the following course : 
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, were not. The 
effect of the Renascence was to cause increasing neglect of 
the Quadrivium, but Rabelais cares for the Quadrivium 
only ; Gargantua studies arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, 
and music, and the Trivium is not mentioned. Great use 
is made of books and Gargantua learned them by heart ; 
but all that he learned he at once " applied to practical 
cases concerning the estate of man." It was the substance 
of the reading, not the form, that was thought of. At dinner 
" if they thought good they continued reading or began to 
discourse merrily together; speaking first of the virtue, 
propriety, efificacy, and nature of all that was served in at 
that table ; of bread, of wine, of water, of salt, of flesh, fish, 
fruits, herbs, roots, and of their dressing. By means whereof 
he learned in a little time all the passages that on these 
subjects are to be found in Pliny, Athenseus, &c. Whilst 
they talked of these things, many times to be more certain they 
caused the very books to be brought to the table ; and so 
well and perfectly did he in his memory retain the things 
above said, that in that time there was not a physician tha,. 
knew half so much as he did." Again, out of doors he was to 
observe trees and plants, and " compare them with what is 
written of them in the books of the ancients, such as Theo- 



^ RABELAIS. 



" Anschauung." Hand-work. Books and Life. 

phrastus, Dioscorides, &c." Here again, actual realism was 
to be joined with verbal realism, for Gargantua was to carry 
home with him great handfuls for herborising. Rabelais 
even recommends studying the face of the heavens at night, 
and then observing the change that has taken place at 
4 in the morning. So he seems to have been the first 
writer on education (and the first by a long interval), who 
would teach about things by observing the things themselves. 
It was this AnscJiaiiungs-prinzip — use of sense-impressions — 
that Pestalozzi extended and claimed as his invention two 
centuries and a half later. Rabelais also gives a hint of the 
use of hand-work as well as head-work. Gargantua and 
his fellows " did recreate themselves in bottling hay, in 
cleaving and sawing wood, and in threshing sheaves of 
corn in the barn. They also studied the art of painting or 
carving." The course was further connected with life by 
visits to the various handicraftsmen, in whose workshops 
" they did leani and consider the industry and invention of 
the trader." 

Thus, even in the time of the Renascence, Rabelais saw 
that the life of the intellect might be nourished by many 
things besides books. But books were still kept in the 
highest place. Even on a holiday, which occurred on some 
fine and clear day once a month, "though spent without 
books or lecture, yet was the day not without profit ; for in 
the meadows they repeated certain pleasant verses of Virgil's 
Agriculture, of Hesiod, of Politian's Husbandry." They 
also turned Latin epigrams into French rondeaux. 

This course of study, " although at first it seemed difficult, 
yet soon became so sweet, so easy, and so delightful, that it 
seemed rather the recreation of a king than the study of a 
scholar." 



RABELAIS. 67 



Training the body. 



In preferring the Quadrivial studies to the Trivial, and 
still more in his use of actual things, Rabelais separates 
himself from all the teachers of his time. 

§ 6. Very remarkable too is the attention he pays to 
physical education. A day does not pass on which Gargantua 
does not gallantly exercise his body as he has already 
exerci sed his mind. The exercises prescribed are very various, 
and include running, jumping, swimming, with practice on the 
horizontal bar and with dumb-bells, &c. But in one respect 
Rabelais seems behind our own writer, Richard Mulcaster. 
Mulcaster trained the body simply with a view to health. 
Rabelais is thinking of the gentleman, and all his physical 
exercises are to prepare him for the gentleman's occupation, 
war. The constant preparation for war had a strong and in 
some respects a very beneficial influence on the education of 
gentlemen in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds, as it has had 
on that of the Germans in the eighteen hundreds. But to be 
ready to slaughter one's fellow creatures is not an ideal aim 
in education ; and besides this, one half of the human race 
can never (as far as we can judge at present) be affected by 
it. We therefore prefer the physical training recommended 
by the Englishman. 

Mr. Walter Besant by his Readings in Rabelais (Blackwood, 1883), 
has put Rabelais' wit and wisdom where we can get at most of it with- 
out searching in the dung-hill. But he has unfortunately omitted 
Gaigantua's letter to Pantagruel at Paris (book ij, chap. 8), where we 
get the curriculum as proposed by Rabelais, a chapter in which no 
scavenger is needed. 

I will give some extracts from it : — 

"Although my deceased father of happy memory, Grangousier, had 
bent his best endeavours to make me profit in all perfection and 
political knowledge, and that my labour and study was fully correspon- 
dent to, yea, went beyond his desire ; nevertheless, the time then was not 



68 RABELAIS. 



Rabelais' Curriculum. 



so proper and fit for learning as it is at present, neither had I 
plenty of such good masters as thou hast had ; for that time was dark- 
some, obscured with clouds of ignorance and savouring a little of the 
infelicity and calamity of the Goths, who had, wherever they set footing, 
destroyed all good literature, which in my age hath by the Divine Good- 
ness been restored unto its former light and dignity, and that with such 
amendment and increase of knowledge that now hardly should I be 
admitted unto the first form of the little grammar school boys {des 
petits grimaulx) : I say, I, who in my youthful days was (and that justly) 
reputed the most learned of that age. Now it is that the old knowledges 
{disciplines) are restored, the languages revived. Greek (without which 
it is a shame for any one to call himself learned), Hebrew, Chaldee, Latin. 
Printing {Des impressions') too, so elegant and exact, is in use, which 
in mv dav was invented by divine inspiration, as cannon were by sug- 
gestion of the devil. All the world is full of men of knowledge, of very 
learned teachers, of large libraries ; so that it seems to me that neither 
in the age of Plato, nor of Cicero, nor of Papinian was there such con- 
venience for studying as there is now. I see the robbers, hangmen, 
adventurers, ostlers of to-day more learned then the doctors and the 
preachers of my youth. Why, women and girls have aspired to the 
heavenly manna of good learning ... I mean you to learn the 
languages perfectly first of all, the Greek as Quintilian wishes, then the 
Latin, then Hebrew for the Scriptures, and Chaldee and Arabic at the 
same time ; and that thou form thy style in Greek on Plato, in Latin 
on Cicero. Let there be no history which thou hast not ready in thy 
memory, in which cosmography will aid thee. Of the Liberal Arts, 
geometry, arithmetic, music, I have given thee a taste when thou wast 
stil a child, at the age of five or six [Pantagruel was a giant, we must 
remember]; carry them on; and know'st thou all the rules of astronomy? 
Don't touch astrology for divination and the art of Lullius, which are 
mere vanity. In the civil law thou must know the five texts by heart 

. . . As for knowledge of the works of Nature, I would liave thee 
devote thyself to them so that there may be no sea, river, or spring of 
which thou knowest not the fishes ; all the birds of the air, all the trees, 
forest or orchard, all the herbs of the field, all the metals hid in the 
bowels of the earth, all the precious stones of the East and the South, 
let nothing be unknown to thee. 

" Then turn again with diligence to the books of the Greek physicians, 



RABELAIS. 69 



Study of Scripture. Piety. 



and the Arabs, and the Latin, without despising the Talmudists and 
the Cabalists ; and by frequent dissections acquire a perfect knowledge 
of !he other world, which is Man. And some hours a-day begin to read 
the Sacred Writings, first in Greek the New Testament and Epistles of 
the Apostles ; then in Hebrew the Old Testament. In brief, let me 
see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge, for from henceforth 
as thou growest great and becomest a man thou must part from this 
tranquillity and rest of study . . . And because, as Solomon saith, 
wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind, and science without con- 
science is but the ruin of the soul, thou shouldst serve, love, and fear 
God, and in Him centre all thy thoughts, all thy hope ; and by faith 
rooted in charity be joined to Him, so as never to be separated from 
Him by sin." 

The influence of Rabelais on Montaigne, Locke, and Rousseau has 
been well traced by Dr. F. A. Arnstadt. (Fraitfois Rabelais, Leipzig, 
Barth, xSja.) 



VI. 

MONTAIGNE. 

(1533-1592.) 

§ I. The learned ideal established by the Renascence was 
accepted by Rabelais, though he made some suggestions 
about Realien* that seem to us much in advance of it. 
When he quotes the saying " Magis magnos clericos non 
sunt magis magnos sapientes" ("the greatest clerks are not the 
greatest sages "), this singular piece of Latinity is appro- 
priately put into the mouth of a monk, who represents 
everything the Renascence scholars despised. In Montaigne 
we strike into a new vein of thought, and we find that what 
the monk alleges in defence of his ignorance the cultured 
gentleman adopts as the expression of an important truth. 

§ 2. We ordinary people see truths indeed, but we see 
them indistinctly, and are not completely guided by them. 

* I am sorry to use a German word, but educational matters have 
been so little considered among us that we have no English vocabulary 
for them. The want of a word for Realien was felt over 2cx> years ago. 
*' Repositories for visibles shall be prepared by which from beholding 
the things gentlewomen may learn the names, natures, values, and use 
of herbs, shrubs, trees, mineral-juices {sic), metals, and stones." (Essay 
to Revive tJu Antient Education of Gentlewomen. London, 1672.) 



MONTAIGNE. 7 1 



Writers and doers. Montaigne u. Renascence. 

It is reserved for men of genius to see truths, some truths 
that is, often a very few, with intense clearness. Some of 
these men have no great talent for speech or writing, and they 
try to express the truths they see, not so much by books as by 
action. Such men in education were Comenius, Pestalozzi, 
aud Froebel. But sometimes the man of genius has a great 
power over language, and then he finds for the truths he 
has seen, fitting expression, which becomes almost as 
lasting as the truths themselves. Such men were Montaigne 
and Rousseau. If the historian of education is asked 
"What did Montaigne do?" he will answer "Nothing." 
"What did Froebel say?" "He said a great deal, but very 
few people can read him and still fewer understand him." 
Both, however, are and must remain forces in education. 
Montaigne has given to some truths imperishable form in his 
Essays^ and Froebel's ideas come home to all the world in 
tlie Kindergarten. 

§ 3. The ideal set up by the Renascence attached the 
highest importance to learning. Montaigne maintained that 
the resulting training even at its best was not suited to a 
gentleman or man of action. Virtue, wisdom, and intel- 
lectual activity should be thought of before learning 
Education should be first and foremost the development and 
exercise of faculties. And even if the acquirement of 
knowledge is thought of, Montaigne maintains that the 
pedants do not understand the first conditions of knowledge 
and give a semblance not the true thing. — " // ne faut pas 
atiacher le savoir d Pdme, il faut Vincorporer. — Knowledge 
cannot be fastened on to the mind ; it must become part 
and parcel of the mind itself."* 

* See the very interesting Essay on Montaigfte by Dean R. W. 
Church. 



72 MONTAIGNE. 



Character before knowledge. True knowledge. 

Here then we have two separate counts against the 
Renascence education : 

ist. — Knowledge is not the main thing. 

2nd. — True knowledge is something very different from 
knowing by heart. 

§ 4. It is a pity Montaigne's utterances about education 
are to be found in English only in the complete translation 
of his essays. Seeing that a good many millions of people 
read English, and are most of them concerned in education, 
one may hope that some day the sayings of the shrewd old 
Frenchman may be offered them in a convenient form. 

§ 5. Here are some of them: "The evil comes of the 
foolish way in which our [instructors] set to work ; and on the 
plan on which we are taught no wonder if neither scholars 
nor masters become more able, whatever they may do in 
becoming more learned. In truth the trouble and expense 
of our fathers are directed only to furnish our heads with 
knowledge : not a word of judgment or virtue. Cry out to 
our people about a passer-by, 'There's a learned man!' and 
about another 'There's a good man !' they will be all agog 
after the learned man, and will not look at the good man. 
One might fairly raise a third cry: 'There's a set of num- 
skulls !' We are ready enough to ask ' Does he know 
Greek or know Latin? Does he write verse or write 
prose?' But whether he has become wiser or better 
should be the first question, and that is always the last 
We ought to find out, not who knows most but who knows 
^es/" (I, chap. 24, Du Pedantisme, page or two beyond 
Odi homines^ 

§ 6. The true educators, according to Montaigne, were 
the Spartans, who despised literature, and cared only for 
character and action. At Athens they thought about words, 



MONTAIGNE. 73 



Athens and Sparta. Wisdom before knowledge. 

at Sparta about things. At Athens boys learnt to speak 
well, at Sparta to da well : at Athens to escape from sophis- 
tical arguments, and to face all attempts to deceive them ; 
at Sparta to escape from the allurements of pleasure, and 
to face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, even 
death itself In the one system there was constant exercise 
of the tongue, in the other of the soul. • " So it is not strange 
that when Antipater demanded of the Spartans fifty children 
as hostages they replied they would sooner give twice as many 
grown men, such store did they set by their country's 
training." {^Dti Fedantis??ie, ad f ) 

§ 7. It is odd to find a man of the fifteen hundreds' who 
quotes from the old authors at every turn, and yet maintains 
that " we lean so much on the arm of other people that we 
lose our own strength." The thing a boy should learn is 
not what the old authors say, but "what he himself ought 
to do when he becomes a man." Wisdom, not knowledge ! 
" We may become learned from the learning of others ; wise 
we can never be except by our own wisdom." (Bk. j, 
chap. 24). 

§ 8. So entirely was Montaigne detached from the 
thought of the Renascence that he scoffs at his own 
learning, and declares that true learning has for its subject, 
not the past or the future, but the present. " We are truly 
learned from knowing the present, not from knowing the 
past any more than the future." And yet " we toil only to 
stufi' the memory and leave the conscience and the under- 
standing void. And like birds who fly abroad to forage for 
grain bring it home in their beak, without tasting it themselves, 
to feed their young, so our pedants go picking knowledge 
here and there out of several authors, and hold it at their 
tongue's end, only to spit it out and distribute it amongst 



74 MONTAIGNE. 



Knowing, and knowing by heart. 

their pupils." {Du Fedantisme.') "We are all richer than 
we think, but they drill us in borrowing and begging, and 
lead us to make more use of other people's goods than of 
our own."* (Bk. iij, chap. 12, De la Fhysiotioniie, beg. of 
3rd paragraph). 

§ 9. So far Montaigne. What do we schoolmasters say 
to all this? If we would be quite candid I think we must 
allow that, after reading Montaigne's essay, we put it down 
with the conviction that in the main he was right, and that 
he had proved the error and absurdity of a vast deal that 
goes on in the schoolroom. But from this first view we 
hav& had on reflection to make several drawbacks. 

§ 10. Montaigne, like Locke and Rousseau, who fol- 
lowed in his steps, arranges for every boy to have a tutor 
entirely devoted to him. We may question whether this 
method of bringing up children is desirable, and we may 
assert, without question, that in most cases it is impossible. 
It seems ordained that at every stage of life we should 
require the companionship of those of our own age. If we 



* Perhaps the saying of Montaigne's which is most frequently quoted 
is the paradox Savoir par cocur ri' est pas savoir : ( " to know by heart is 
ViQiio know") But these words are often misunderstood. The meaning, 
as I take it, is this : When a thought has entered into the mind it 
shakes off the words by which it was conveyed thither. Therefore so 
long as the words are indispensable the thought is not known. Knowing 
and knowing by heart are not necessarily opposed, but they are different 
things ; and as the mind most easily runs along sequences of words a 
knowledge of the words often conceals ignorance or neglect of the 
thought. I once asked a boy if he thought of the meaning when he 
repeated Latin poetry and I got the instructive answer : "Sometimes, 
when 1 am not sure of the words. " But there are cases in which we 
naturally connect a particular form of words with thoughts that have 
become part of our minds. We then know, and know by heart also. 



MONTAIGNE. JS 



Learning necessary as employment. 

take two beings as little alike as a man and a child and 
force them to be each other's companions, so great is the 
flifference in their thoughts and interests that they will fall 
into inevitable boredom and restraint. So we see that this 
plan, even in the few cases in which it would be possible, 
would not be desirable ; and for the great majority of boys 
it would be out of the question. We must then arrange 
for the young to be taught, not as individuals, but in classes, 
and this greatly changes the conditions of the problem. 
One of the first conditions is this, that we have to employ 
each class regularly and uniformly for some hours every 
day. Schoolmasters know what their non-scholastic mentors 
forget : we can make a class learn, but, broadly speaking, 
we cannot make a class think, still less can we make it 
judge. As a great deal of occupation has to be provided, 
we are therefore forced to make our pupils learn. What- 
ever may be the value of the learning in itself it is absolutely 
necessary as employment. 

§ II. No doubt it will make a vast difference whether 
we consider the learning mainly as employment, as a 
means of taking up time and preventing *' sauntering," as 
Locke boldly calls it, or whether we are chiefly anxious to 
secure some special results. The knowledge of the Latin 
and Greek languages and the Latin and Greek authors was 
a result so highly prized by the Renascence scholars that 
they insisted on a prodigious quantity of learning, not as 
employment, but simply as the means of acquiring this 
knowledge. As the knowledge got to be less esteemed the 
pressure was by degrees relaxed. In our public schools fifty 
or sixty years ago the learning was to some extent retained as 
employment, but there certainly was no pressure, and the 
majority of the boys never learnt the ancient languages. 



^6 MONTAIGNE. 

Montaigne and our Public Schools. 

So the masters of that time had given up the Renascence 
enthusiasm for the classics, and on the negative side of 
his teaching had come to an agreement with Montaigne. 
Any one inclined to sarcasm might say that on the positive 
side they were still totally opposed to him, for he thought 
virtue and judgment were the main things to be cared for, 
and they did not care for these things at all. But this is 
not a fair statement. The one thing gained, or supposed to 
to be gained, in the public schools was the art of living, and 
this art, though it does not demand heroic virtue, requires at 
least prudence and self-control. Montaigne's system was a 
revolt against the bookishness of the Renascence. " In our 
studies," says he, " whatever presents itself before us is book 
enough ; a roguish trick of a page, a blunder of a 
servant, a jest at table, are so many new subjects." So the 
education out of school was in his eyes of m,ore value than 
the education in school. And this was acknowledged also 
in our public schools : " It is not the Latin and Greek they 
learn or don't learn that we consider so important,"' the 
masters used to say, " but it is the tone of the school and 
the discipline of the games." But of late years this 
virtual agreement with Montaigne has been broken up. 
School work is no longer mere employment, but it is done 
under pressure, and with penalties if the tale of brick 
turned out does not pass the inspector. 

§ 12. What has produced this great change? It is due 
mainly to two causes : 

I. Th6 pressure put on the young to attain classical 
knowledge was relaxed when it was thought that they could 
get through life very well without this knowledge. But 
in these days new knowledge has awakened a new enthusiasm. 
The knowledge of science promises such great advantages 



MONTAIGNE. 'J'J 



Pressure from Science and Examinations. 

that the latest reformers, headed by Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
seem to make the well-being of the grown person depend 
mainly on the amount of scientific knowledge he stored up 
in his youth. This is the first cause of educational pressure. 
§ 13, 2. The second and more urgent cause is the 
rap'.d development of our system of examinations. Every- 
body's educational status is now settled by the examiner, a 
potentate whose influence has brought back in a very 
malignant form all the evils of which Montaigne complains. 
Do what we will, the faculty chiefly exercised in preparing 
for ordinary examinations is the "carrying memory." So 
the acquisition of knowledge — mere memory or examination 
knowledge — has again come to be regarded as the one thing 
needful in education, and there is great danger of everything 
else being neglected for it. Of the fourfold results of 
education — virtue, wisdom, good manners, learning — the 
last alone can be fairly tested in examinations ; and as the 
schoolmaster's very bread depends nowadays first on his 
getting through examinations himself and then on getting 
his pupils through, he would be more than human, if with 
Locke he thought of learning "last and least." A great 
change has come over our public schools. The amount of 
work required from the boys is far greater than it used to be 
and masters again measure their success by the amount of 
knowledge the average boy takes away with him. It seems 
to me high time that another Montaigne arose to protest 
tjiat a man's intellectual life does not consist in the number 
of things he remembers, and that his true life is not his 
intellectual life only, but embraces his power of will and 
action and his love of what is noble and right. " Wisdom 
cried of old, I am the mother of fair Love and Fear and 
Knowledge and holy Hope " {Ecclesiasticus). In these 



78 MONTAIGNE. 



Danger from knowledge. 



days of science and examinations does there not seem some 
danger lest knowledge should prove the sole surviver ? Maj 
not Knowledge, like another Cain, raise its hand against its 
brethren " fair Love and Fear and holy Hope?" This is 
perhaps the great danger of our time, a danger especially 
felt in education. Every school parades its scholarships at 
the public schools or at the universities, or its passes in the 
Oxford and Cambridge Locals, or its percentage at the last 
Inspection, and asks to be judged by these. And yet these 
are not the one thing or indeed the chief thing needful : 
and it will be the ruin of true education if, as Mark Pattison 
said, the master's attention is concentrated on the least 
important part of his duty.* 



* Lord Armstrong has perhaps never read Montaigne's Essay on 
Pedantry; certainly, he has not borrowed from it ; and yet much that 
he says in discussing " The Cry for Useless Knowledge " {Nineteenth 
Century Magazine, November, 1888), is just what Montaigne said more 
than three centuries ago. "The aphorism that knowledge is power is 
so constantly used by educational enthusiasts that it may almost be re- 
garded as the motto of the party. But the first essential of a motto 
is that it be true, and it is certainly not true that knowledge is the 
same as power, seeing that it is only an aid to power. The power of a 
surgeon to amputate a limb no more lies in his knowledge than in his 
knife. In fact, the knife has the belter claim to potency of the two, 
for a man may hack off a limb with his knife alone, but not with his 
knowledge alone. Knowledge is not even an aid to power in all cases, 
seeing that useless knowledge, which is no uncommon article in our 
popular schools, has no relation to power. The true source of po'X'er 
is the originative action of the mind which we see exhibited in the daily 
incidents of life, as well as in matters of great importance. . . . 

A man's success in life depends incomparably more upon his capacities 
for useful action than upon his acquirements in knowledge, and the 
education of the young should therefore be directed to the development 
of faculties and valuable qualities rather than to the acquisition of know- 



MONTAIGNE. 79 



Montaigne and Lord Armstrong. 

ledge, . . . Men of capacity and possessing qualities for useful 
action are at a premium all over the world, while men of mere education 
are at a deplorable discount." (p. 664). 

" There is a great tendency in the scholastic world to underrate the 
value and potency of self-education, which commences on leaving school 
and endures all through life." (p. 667). 

" I deprecate plunging into doubtful and costly schemes of instruction, 
led on by the ignis fatuus that 'knowledge is a power.' For where 
natural capacity is wasted in attaining knowledge, it would be truer to 
say that knowledge is weakness." (p. 66S). 



VII. 

ASCHAM. 
(151S-1568.) 



§ I. Masters and scholars who sigh over what seem to 
them the intricacies and obscurities of modern grammars 
may find some consolation in thinking that, after all, matters 
might have been worse, and that our fate is enviable indeed 
compared with that of the students of Latin 400 years ago. 
Did the reader ever open the Doctrinale of Alexandei 
de Villa Dei, which was the grammar in general use from 
the middle of the thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth 
century? (&." Appendix, p. 532). If so, he is aware how 
great a step towards simplicity was made by our grammatical 
reformers, Lily, Colet, and Erasmus. Indeed, those whom 
we now regard as the forgers of our chains were, in their 
own opinion and that of their contemporaries, the champions 
of freedom (Appendix, p. 533). 

§ 2. I have given elsewhere (Appendix, p. 533) a remark- 
able passage from Colet, in which he recommends the 
leaving of rules, and the study of examples in good Latin 
authors. Wolsey also, in his directions to the masters of 
Ipswich School (dated 1528), proposes that the boys should 
be exercised in the eight parts of speech in the first form, 



ASCHAM. 81 

Wolsey on teaching". 

and should begin to speak Latin and translate from English 
into Latin in the second. If the masters think fit, they may 
also let the pupils read Lily's Carmen Monitorium, or ('ato's 
Distichs. From the third upwards a regular course ol 
classical authors was to be read, and Lily's rules were to be 
introduced by degrees. " Although I confess such things 
are necessary," writes Wolsey, " yet, as far as possible, we 
could wish them so appointed as not to occupy the more 
valuable part of the day." Only in the sixth form, the 
highest but two, Lily's syntax was to be begun. In these 
schools the boys' time was wholly taken up with Latin, and 
the speaking of Latin was enforced even in play hours, so 
we see that anomalies in the accidence as taught in the As 
in prcesetiti were not given till the boys had been some time 
using the language ; and the syntax was kept till they had 
a good practical knowledge of the usages to which the rules 
referred.* 

§ 3. But although there was a great stir in education 
throughout this century, and several English books were 
published about it, we come to 1570 before we find any- 
thing that has lived till now. We then have Roger Ascham's 
Schole/naster, a posthumous work brought out by Ascham's 
widow, and republished in 157 1 and 1589. The book was 

* In another matter, also, we find that the masters of these schools 
subsequently departed widely from the intention of the great men who 
fostered the revival of learning. Wolsey writes : *' Imprimis hoc anum 
admonendum censuerimus, ut neque plagis severioribus neque vultuosis 
minis, aut ulla tyrannidis specie, tenera pubes afficiatur : hac enim 
injuria ingenii alacritas aut extingui aut magna ex parte obtundi solet." 
Again he says : " In ipsis sfudiis sic voluptas est intermiscenda ut puer 
ludumpotiusdiscendiquamlaboremexistimet." He adds: "Cavendum 
erit ne immodica ccntentione ingenia discentium obruantur aut lections 
prolonga defatigentur ; utraque enim juxta offenditur." 
n 



82 ASCHAM. 

History of Methods useful. 

then lost sight of, but reappeared, with James Upton as 
editor, in 17 ii,* and has been regarded as an educational 
classic ever since. Dr. Johnson says "it contains peihaps 
the best advice that was ever given for the study of 
language^," and Professor J. E. B. Mayor, who • on this 
point is a higher authority than Dr. Johnson, declares that 
" this book sets forth the only sound method of acquiring a 
dead language." 

§ 4. With all their contempt for theory, English school- 
masters might have been expected to take an interest in one 
part of the history of education, viz., the history of methods. 
There is a true saying attributed by Marcel to Talleyrand, 
'■'■ Les Methodes sont les tnaitres des maitres — Method is the 
master's master." The history of education shows us that 
every subject of instruction has been taught in various 
ways, and further, that the contest of methods has not 
uniformly ended in the survival of the fittest. Methods then 
might often teach the teachers, if the teachers caved to be 
taught ; but till within the last half century or so an unin- 
telligent traditional routine has sufficed for them. There 
has no doubt been a great change since men now old were 
at school, but in those days the main strength of the 
teaching was given to Latin, and the masters knew of no 
better method of starting boys in this language than 
making them learn by heart Lily's, or as it was then called, 
the Eton Latin Grammar. If reason had had anything to 
do with teaching, this book would have been demolished 
by Richard Johnson's Grammatical Commentaries published 



* Professor Arber is one of the very few editors who give accurate 
and sufficient bibliographical information about the books they edit. 
All students of our old literature are under deep obligations to him- 



ASCHAM. 83 

Our three celebrities. 



in 1 706 ; but worthless as Johnson proved it to be, the 
Grammar was for another 150 years treated by Engh"sh 
schoolmasters as the only introduction to the Latin tongue. 
The books that have recently been published show a 
tendency to revert to methods set forth in Elizabeth's reign 
in Ascham's Scholemaster (1570) and William Kempe's 
Education of Children (1588), but the innovators have not 
as a rule been drawn to these methods by historical 
inquiry. 

§ 5. There seem to be only three English writers on 
education who have caught the ear of other nations, and 
these are Ascham, Locke, and Herbert Spencer. Of a 
contemporary we do well to speak' with the same reserve as 
of " present company," but of the other two we may say 
that the choice has been somewhat capricious. Locke's 
Thoics,hts perhaps deserves the reputation and influence it 
has always had, but in it he hardly does himself justice as a 
philosopher of the mind ; and much of the advice which has 
been considered his exclusively, is to be found in his 
English predecessors whose very names are unknown except 
to the educational antiquarian. Ascham wrote a few pages 
on method which entitle him to mention in an account of 
methods of language-learning. He also wrote a great many 
pages about things in general which would have shared the 
fate of many more valuable but long forgotten books had 
he not had one peculiarity in which the other writers were 
wanting, that indescribable something which Matthew Arnold 
calls "charm." 

§ 6. Ascham has been very fortunate in his editors, Pro- 
fessor Arber and Professor Mayor, and the last editions* 

* Mayor's is beautifully printed and costs \s. (London, Bell and 
Sons. ) 



84 ASCHAM. 

A.'s method for Latin : first stage. 

give everyone an opportunity of reading the Scholemaster. 
I shall therefore speak of nothing but the method. 

§ 7. Latin is to be taught as follows : — First, let the 
child learn the eight parts of speech, and then the right 
joining together of substantives with adjectives, the noun 
with the verb, the relative with the antecedent. After the 
concords are learned, let the master take Sturm's selection 
of Cicero's Epistles, and read them after this manner : 
" first, let him teach the child, cheerfully and plainly, the 
cause and matter of the letter ; then, let him construe it 
into English so oft as the child may easily carry away the 
understanding of it ; lastly, parse it over perfectly. This 
done, then let the child by and by both construe and parse 
it over again ; so that it may appear that the child doubteth 
in nothing that his master has taught him before. After 
this, the child must take a paper book, and, sitting in some 
place where no man shall prompt him, by himself let him 
translate into English his former lesson. Then showing it 
to his master, let the master take from him his Latin book, 
and pausing an hour at the least, then let the child translate 
his own English into Latin again in another paper book. 
When the child bringeth it turned into Latin, the master must 
compare it with Tully's book, and ^lay them both together, 
and where the child doth well, praise him," where amiss point 
out why Tully's use is better. Thus the child will easily 
acquire a knowledge of grammar, "and also the ground of 
almost all the rules that are so busily taught by the master, and 
so hardly learned by the scholar in all common schools. . . . 
We do not contemn rules, but we gladly teach rules; and 
teach them more plainly, sensibly, and orderly, than they be 
commonly taught in common schools. ' For when the master 
shall compare Tully's book with the scholar's translation, 



ASCHAM. 85 

Second stage. The six points. 

let the master at the first lead and teach the scholar to join 
the rules of his grammar book with the examples of his 
present lesson, until the scholar by himself be able to fetch 
out of his grammar every rule for every example ; and let 
the grammar book be ever in the scholar's hand, and also 
used by him as a dictionary for every present use. This is 
a lively and perfect way of teaching of rules ; where the 
common way used in common schools to read the grammar 
alone by itself is tedious for the master, hard for the scholar, 
cold and uncomfortable for them both." And elsewhere 
Ascham says : " Yea, I do wish that all rules for young 
scholars were shorter than they be. For, without doubt, 
grammatica itself is sooner and surer learned by examples 
of good authors than by the naked rules of grammarians." 

§ 8. "As you perceive your scholar to go better on away, 
first, with understanding his lesson more quickly, with 
parsing more readily, with translating more speedily and 
perfectly than he was wont ; after, give him longer lessons 
to translate, and, withal, begin to teach him, both in nouns 
and verbs, what is proprium and what is translatum, what 
synonymum, what diversiim^ which be contraria, and which 
be most notable phrases, in all his lectures, as — 

Proprium . Rex sepultus est magnifice. 

Translatum . Cum illo principe, sepulta est et gloria et salus 

reipublicje. 
Synonyma . Ensis, gladius : laudare, praedicare. 
Diversa . . Diligere, amare : calere, exardescere : inimicus, 

hostis. 
Contraria . . Acerbum et luctuosum bellum, "dulcis et Iseta pax. 
Phrases . . Dare verba, adjicere obedientiam." 

Every lesson is to be thus carefully analysed, and entered 
under these headings in a third MS. book. 



86 ASCHAM. 

Value of double translating and writing. 

§ 9. Here Ascham leaves his method, and returns to it 
only at the beginning of Book II. He there supposes the 
first stage to be finished and " your scholar to have come in- 
deed, first to a ready perfectness in translating, then to a 
ripe and skilful choice in marking out his six points." He now 
recommends a course of Cicero, Terence, Caesar, and Livy 
which is to be read "a good deal at every lecture." And 
the master is to give passages " put into plain natural 
English." These the scholar shall " not know where to 
find " till he shall have tried his hand at putting them into 
Latin; then the- master shall "bring forth the place in Tully," 

§ 10. In the Second Book of the Scholemaster, 
Ascham discusses the various branches of the study then 
common, viz. : i. Translatio linguarum ; 2. Paraphrasis-j 
3. Metaphrasis ; 4. Epitome ; 5. Imitatio ; 6. Declamatio. 
He does not lay much stress on any of these, except 
translatio and imitatio. Of the last he says : "All languages, 
both learned and mother-tongue, be golten, and gotten only, 
by imitation. For, as ye use to hear, so ye use to speak ; if 
ye hear no other, ye speak not yourself ; and whom ye only 
hear, of them ye only learn." But translation was his great 
instrument for all kinds of learning. " The translation," he 
says, " is the most common and most commendable of all 
other exercises for youth ; most common, for all your con- 
structions in grammar schools be nothing else but translations, 
but because they be not double translations (as I do require) 
they bring forth but simple and single commodity : and 
because also they lack the daily use of writing, which is the 
only thing that breedeth deep root, both in the wit for good 
understanding and in the memory for sure keeping of all 
that is learned ; most commendable also, and that by the 
judgment of all authors which entreat of these exercises." 



ASCHAM. 87 

Study of a model book. 

§ II, After quoting Pliny,* he says: "You perceive 
how Pliny teacheth that by this exercise of double trans- 
lating is learned easily, sensibly, by little and little, not 
only all the hard congruities of grammar, the choice of 
ablest words, the- right pronouncing of words and sentences, 
comeliness of figures, and forms fit for every matter and 
proper for every tongue : but, that which is greater also, in 
marking daily and following diligently thus the footsteps of 
the best authors, like invention of arguments, like order in 
disposition, like utterance in elocution, is easily gathered 
up ; and hereby your scholar shall be brought not only to 
like eloquence, but also to all true understanding and right- 
ful judgment, both for writing and speaking," 

Again he says : " For speedy attaining, I durst venture a 
good wager if a scholar in whom is aptness, love, diligence, 
and constancy, would but translate after this sort some little 
book in Tuliy (as De Senectitte, with two Epistles, the first 
*Ad Quintum Fratrem,' the other *Ad Lentulum'), that 
scholar, I say, should come to a better knowledge in the 
Latin tongue than the most part do that spend from five to 
six yeais in tossing all the rules of grammar in common 
schools." After quoting the instance of Dion Prussaeus, 
who came to great learning and utterance by reading and 
following only two books, the Phcedo, and Demosthenes de 



• " Utile imprimis ut multi prsscipiunt, vel ex Grseco in Latiniim vel 
ex Latino vertere in Grsecum ; quo genere exercitationis propnetas 
splendorque verborum, copia figurarum, vis explicandi, prseterea imita- 
tione optimorum similia inveniendi facultas paratur : simul quae 
legentem fefellissent transferentem fugere non possunt. Intelligentia 
ex hue et judicium acquiritur." — Epp. vii. 9, § 2. So the passage stands 
in Pliny. Ascham quotes ' V/ ex Grseco in Latinum et ex Latino vertere 
:n Grsecum," with other variations. 



88 ASCHAM. 

Q. Elizabeth. " A dozen times at the leasf 

Falsa Legatione, he goes on : " And a better and nearer 
example herein may be our most noble Queen Elizabeth, 
who never took yet Greek nor Latin grammar in her hand 
after the first declining of a noun and a verb ; but only by 
this double translating of Demosthenes and Isocrates daily, 
without missing, every forenoon, and likewise some part of 
Tully every afternoon, for the space of a year or two, hath 
attained to such a perfect understanding in both the tongues, 
and to such a ready utterance of the Latin, and that with 
such a judgment, as there be few now in both Universities 
or elsewhere in England that be in both tongues comparable 
with Her Majesty." Ascham's authority is indeed not con- 
clusive on this point, as he, in praising the Queen's attain- 
ments, was vaunting his own success as a teacher, and, 
moreover, if he flattered her he could plead pre%'ailing 
custom. But we have, I believe, abundant evidence that 
Elizabeth was an accomplished scholar. 

§ 12. Before I leave Ascham I must make one more 
quotation, to which I shall more than once have occasion 
to refer. Speaking of the plan of double translation, he 
says : " Ere the scholar have construed, parsed, twice trans- 
lated over by good advisement, marked out his six points 
by skilful judgment, he shall have necessary occasion to 
read over every lecture a dozen times at the least; which 
because he shall do always in order, he shall do it always 
with pleasure. And pleasure allureth love : love hath lust 
to labour ; labour always obtaineth his purpose." 

§ 13. A good deal has bean said, and perhaps something 
learnt, about the teaching of Latin since the days of Ascham. 
As far as I know the method which Ascham denounced, and 
which most English schoolmasters stuck to for more than 
two centuries longer, has now been abandoned No one 



ASCHAM. 89 

" Impressionists" and " Retainers." 

thinks of making the beginner learn by heart all the Latin 
Grammar before he is introduced to the Latin language. 
To understand the machinery of which an account is given 
in the grammar, the learner must see it at work, and must 
even endeavour in a small way to work it himself. So it 
seems pretty well agreed that the information given in the 
grammar must be joined with some construing and some 
exercises from the very first. But here the agreement ends. 
Our teachers, consciously or in ignorance, follow one or 
more of a number of methodizers who have examined the 
problem of language-learning, such men as Ascham, Ratke, 
Comenius, Jacotot, Hamilton, Robertson, and Prendergast. 
These naturally divide themselves into two parties, which I 
have ventured to call " Rapid Impressionists," and " Com- 
plete Retainers." The first of these plunge the beginner 
into the language, and trust to the great mass of vague 
impressions clearing and defining themselves as he goes 
along. The second insist on his learning at the first a very 
small portion of the language, and mastering and retaining 
everything he learns. It will be seen that in the first stage 
of the course Ascham is a " Complete Retainer." He does 
not talk, like Prendergast, of " mastery," nor, like Jacotot, 
does he require the learner to begin every lesson at the 
begiiming of the book : but he makes the pupil go over 
each lesson "a dozen times at the least," before he may 
advance beyond it. As for his practice of double trans- 
lation, for the advanced pupil it is excellent, but if it is 
required from the beginner, it leads to unintelligent memo- 
lizing. I think I shall be able to show later on that other 
methodizers have advanced beyond Ascham. {Infra, 246 n.) 



VIII. 

MULCASTER 

(i53i(?)-i6ii.) 



*§ I. The history of English thought on education has 
yet to be written. In the Hterature of education the 
Germans have been the pioneers, and have consequently 
settled the routes ; and when a track has once been estab- 
lished few travellers will face the risk and trouble of 
leaving it. So up to the present time, writers on the history 
of European education after the Renascence have occupied 
themselves chiefly with men who lived in Germany, or 
wrote in German. But the French are at length exploring 
the country for themselves ; and in time, no doubt, the 
English-speaking races will show an interest in the thoughts 
and doings of their common ancestors. 

We know what toils and dangers men will encounter in 
getting to the source of great rivers ; and although, as Mr. 
Widgery truly says, " the study of origins is not everybody's 
business,"* we yet may hope that students will be found 
ready to give time and trouble to an investigation of great 
interest and perhaps some utility — the origin of the school 

• Teaching of Languages in Schools, by W. H. Widgery, p. 6. 



MULCASTER. QI 



Old books in English on education. 

course which now affects the millions who have English for 
their mother-tongue. 

§ 2. In the fifteen hundreds there were published 
Bcveral works on education, three of which, Elyot's 
Gotiernour, Ascham's Scholemaster, and Mulcaster's 
Positions, have been recently reprinted.* Others, such as 
Edward Coote's E/iglish Schoolmaster, and Mulcaster's 
Eletnentarie, are pretty sure to follow, without serious loss, 
let us hope, to their editors, though neither Coote nor 
IMulcaster are likely to become as well-known writers as 
Roger Ascham. 

§ 3. Henry Barnard, whose knowledge of our educa- 
tional literature no less than his labours in it, makes him 
the greatest living authority, says that Mulcaster's Positions 
is "one of the earliest, and still one of the best treatises 
in the English language." {English Pedagogy, 2nd series, 
p. 177.) Mulcaster was one of the most famous of English 
schoolmasters, and by his writings he proved that he was 
tar in advance of the schoolmasters of his own time, and of 
the times which succeeded. But he paid the penalty of 
thinking of himself more highly than he should have 
thought ; and whether or no the conjecture is right that 
Shakespeare had him in his mind when writing Love's 
Labour's Lost, there is an affectation in Mulcaster's style 
which is very irritating, for it has caused even the mastei of 
Edmund Spenser to be forgotten. In a curious and interest- 
ing allegory on the progress of language (in the Eletnentatie, 

* Much information about our early books, with quotations from some 
of them, will be found in Henry Barnard's English Pedagogy, 1st and 2nd 
series. Some notice of rare books is given in Schools, School-books, and 
Schoolriiasters, by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, Jarvis, 1888), but in this 
work there are strange omissions. 



92 MULCASTER, 



M.'s wisdom hidden by his style. 

pp. 66, ff.), Mulcaster says that Art selects the best age of 
a language to draw rules from, such as the age of Demos- 
thenes in Greece and of Tully in Rome ; and he goes on : 
"Such a period in the English tongue I take to be in our 
days for both the pen and the speech," And he suggests 
that the English language, having reached its zenith, is seen 
to advantage, not in the writings of Shakespeare or Spenser, 
but in those of Richard Mulcaster. After enumerating 
the excellencies of the language, he adds : " I need no 
example in any of these, whereof my own penning is a 
general pattern." Here we feel tempted to exclaim with 
Armado in Lov^s Labour's Lost (Act 5, so. 2) : "I protest 
the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical : too too vain, too 
too vain." He speaks elsewhere of his " so careful, I will 
not say so curious writing" {Elemeniarie, p. 253), and says 
very truly: "Even some of reasonable study can hardly 
understand the couching of my sentence, and the depth of 
my conceit " {ib., p. 235). And this was the death-warrant 
of his literary renown. 

§ 4. But there is good reason why Mulcaster should 
not be forgotten. When we read his books we find that 
wisdom which we are importing in the nineteenth century 
was in a great measure offered us by an English schoolmaster 
in the sixteenth. The latest advances in pedagogy have 
established (i) that the end and aim of education is to 
develop the faculties of the mind and body ; (2) that all 
teaching processes should be carefully adapted to the 
mental constitution of the learner; (3) that the first stage in 
learning is of immense importance and requires a very high 
degree of skill in the teacher ; (4) that the brain of children, 
especially of clever children, should not be subjected to 
"pressure"; (5) that childhood should not be spent in 



MULCASTER. 93 



Education and "learning." 



learning foreign languages, but that its language should be 
the mother-tongue, and its exercises should include hand- 
work, especially drawing ; (6) that girls' education should be 
cared for no less than boys' ; (7) that the only hope of im- 
proving our schools lies in providing training for our 
teachers. These are all regarded as planks in the platform 
of " the new education," and these were all advocated by 
Mulcaster. 

§ 5. Before I point this out in detail I may remark how 
greatly education has suffered from being confounded with 
learning. There are interesting passages both in Ascham 
and Mulcaster which prove that the class-ideal of the 
" scholar and gentleman " was of later growth. In the fifteen 
hundreds learning was thought suitable, not for the rich, but 
for the clever. Still, learning, and therefore education, was 
not for the many, but the few. Mulcaster considers at some 
length how the number of the educated is to be kept down 
{Positions, chapp. 36, 37, 39), though even here he is in the 
van, and would have everyone taught to read and write 
{Positions^ chapp. 5, 36). But the true problem of education 
was not faced till it was discovered that every human being 
was to be considered in it. This was, I think, first seen by 
Comenius. 

With this abatement we find Mulcaster's sixteenth-century 
notions not much behind our nineteenth. 

§ 6. (i & 2) " Why is it not good," he asks, "to have every 
part of the body and every power of the soul to be fined to 
his best?" {PP., p. 34*). Elsewhere he says: "The end of 
education and train is to help Nature to her perfection. 



* The paging is that of the reprint. It differs slightly from that of 
first edition. 



94 MULCASTER. 



I. Development 2. Child-study. 

which is, when all her abilities be perfected in their habit, 
whereunto right elements be right great helps. Considerat ion 
and judgment must wisely mark whereunto Nature is either 
evidently given or secretly affectionate and must frame an 
education consonant thereto." (^/., p. 28). 

Michelet has with justice claimed for Montaigne that he 
drew the teacher's attention from the thing to be learnt to the 
learner : " JVon Fobjet, le savoir^ inais le sujet, dest rhovune.^'' 
{Nos Fits, p. 170.) Mulcaster has a claim to share this 
honour with his great contemporary. He really laid the 
foundation of a science of education. Discussing our 
natural abilities, he says : " We have a perceiving by out- 
ward sense to feel, to hear, to see, to smell, to taste all 
sensible things ; which qualities of the outward, being 
received in by the common sense and examined by fanisie, 
are delivered to remembrance^ and afterward prove our great 
and only grounds unto further knowledge."* (^/., p. 32.) 
Here we see Mulcaster endeavouring to base education, or 
as he so well calls it, "train," on what we receive from 
Nature. Elsewhere he speaks of the three things which we 
" find peering out of the little young souls," viz : " wit to take, 
memory to Iceep, and discretion to discern." {PP-t p. 27.) 



* Mulcaster goes on to talk about the brain, &c. Of course he does 
not anticipate the discoveries of science, but his language is very differ- 
ent from what we should expect from a writer in the pre-scientific age, 
e.g., " To serve the turn of these two, both sense and motion, Nature hath 
planted in our body a brain, the prince of all our parts, which by 
spreading sinews of all sorts throughout all our parts doth work all 
those effects which either sense is seen in or motion perceived by." 
{EL, p. 32.) But much as he thinks of the body Mulcaster is no 
materialist. " Last of all our soul hath in it an imperial prerogative of 
understanding beyond sense, of judging by reason, of directmg byboth^ 



MULCASTER. 95 



3. Groundwork by best workman. 

§ 7. (3) I have pointed out that the false ideal of the 
Renascence led schoolmasters to neglect children. 
Mule aster remarks that the ancients considered the training 
of children should date from the bjrth; but he himself 
begins with the school age. Here he has the boldness to 
propose that those who teach the beginners should have the 
smallest number of pupils, and should receive the highest 
pay. " The first groundwork would be laid by the best 
workman," says Mulcaster {FF., T30), here expressing a 



for duty tov/ards God, for society towards men, for conquest in 
affections, for purchase in knowledge, and such other things, whereby 
it furnisheth out all manner of uses in this our mortal life, and 
bewrayeth in itself a more excellent being than to continue still in this 
roaming pilgrimage." (p. 33.) The grand thing, he says, is to bring 
all these abilities to perfection "which so heavenly a benefit is begun 
by education, confirmed by use, perfected with continuance which 
crowneth the whole work" (p. 34.) "Nature makes the boy toward ; 
nurture sees him forward." (p. 35). The neglect of the material world 
which has been for ages the source of miischief of all kinds in the 
schoolroom, and which has not yet entirely passed away, would have 
been impossible if Mulcaster's elementary course had been adopted. 
" Is the body made by Nature nimble to run, to ride, to swim, to fence, 
to do anything else which beareth praise in that kind for either profit or 
pleasure ? And doth not the Elementary help them all forward by pre- 
cept and train ? The hand, the ear, the eye be the greatest instruments 
whereby the receiving and delivery of our learning is chiefly executed, 
and doth not this Elementary instruct the hand to write, to draw, to play ; 
the eye to read by letters, to discern by line, to judge by both ; the ear 
Xz call for voice and sound with proportion for pleasure, with reason for 
wit ? Geneially whatsoever gift Nature hath bestowed upon the body, 
to be brought forth or bettered by the mean of train for any profitable 
use in our whole life, doth not this Elementary both find it and foresee 
it?" (El., p. 35). " The hand, the ear, the eye, be the gt-eatest inst^u- 
ments," said the Elizabethan schoolmaster. So says the Victorian 
reformer. 



g6 MULCASTER. 



4. No forcing of young plants. 



truth which, like many truths that are not quite convenient, 
is seldom denied but almost systematically ignored.* 

§ 8. (4) In the Ni7ieteeiith Century Magazine for November, 
1888, appeared a vigorous protest with nearly 40c signatures^ 



• I wish some good author would write a book on U7rpopular Truths, 
and show how, on some subjects, wise men go on saying the same tiling 
in all ages and nobody listens to them. Plato said "In every work 
the beginning is the most important part, especially in dealing with 
anything young and tender." {Rep., bk. ii, 377 ; Davies and Vaughan, 
p. 65.) And the complaints about "bad grounding" prove our com- 
mon neglect of what Mulcaster urged three centuries ago : " For the 
Ekmentarie because good scholars will not abase themselves to it, it is 
left to the meanest, and therefore to the worst. For that the first 
grounding would be handled by the best, and his reward would be 
greatest, because both his pains and his judgment should be with the 
greatest. And it would easily allure sufficient men to come down so 
low, if they might perceive that reward would rise up. No man of 
judgment will contrary this point, neither can any ignorant be blamed 
for the contrary : the one seeth the thing to be but low in order, the 
other knoweth the ground to be great in laying, not only for the matter 
which the child doth learn : which is very small in show though great 
for process : but also for the manner of handling his wit, to hearten 
him for afterward, which is of great moment. The first master can deal 
but with a few, the next with more, and so still upward as reason 
groweth on and receives without forcing. It is the foundation well 
and soundly laid, which makes all the upper building muster, with 
countenance and continuance. If I were to strike the stroke, as I am 
but to give counsel, the first pains truly taken should in good truth be 
most liberally recompensed ; and less allowed still upward, as the pains 
diminish and the ease increaseth. Whereat no master hath cause to 
repine, so he may have his children well grounded in the Elemetitarie. 
"Whose imperfection at this day doth marvellously trouble both masters 
and scholars, so that we can hardly do any good, nay, scantly tell how 
to place the too too raw boys in any certain form, with hope to go for- 
ward orderly, the ground-work of their entry being so rotten under- 
neath." {PP., pp. 233, 4.) 



MULCASTER. • 97 



5. The elementary course. English. 

many of which carried great weight with them, against our 
sacrifice of education to examination. Our present system, 
whether good or bad, is the result of accident. Winchester 
and Eton had large endowments, and naturally endeavoured 
by means of these endowments to get hold of clever boys. 
At first no doubt they succeeded fairly well ; but other 
schools felt bound to compete for juvenile brains, and as the 
number of prizes increased, many of our preparatory schools 
became mere racing stables for children destined at 12 or 
14 to run for " scholarship stakes." Thus, in the scramble 
for the money all thought of education has been lost sight 
of; injury has been done in many cases to those who have 
succeeded, still greater injury to those who have failed or 
who have from the first been considered "out of the running." 
These very serious evils would have been avoided had we 
taken counsel with Mulcaster : " Pity it were for so petty a 
gain to forego a greater ; to win an hour in the morning and 
lose the whole day after ; as those people most commonly 
do which start out of their beds too early before they be well 
awaked or know what it is o'clock ; and be drowsy when 
they are up for want of their sleep." {PP.., p. 19; see also 
EL, xi., pp. 52 ff.) 

§ 9. (5) It would have been a vast gain to all Europe if 
Mulcaster had been followed instead of Sturm. He was one 
of the earliest advocates of the use of English instead of 
Latin (see Appendix, p. 534), and good reading and writing 
in English were to be secured before Latin was begun. His 
elementary course included these five things: English reading, 
English writing, drawing, singing, playing a musical instru- 
ment. If the first course were made to occupy the school- 
time up to the age of 12, Mulcaster held that more would 
be done between 12 and i6 than between 7 and 17 iu 



98 MULCASTER. 



6. Girls as well as Boys. 



the ordinary way. There would be the further gain 
that the children would not be set against learning. " Because 
of the too timely onset too little is done in too long a time, 
and the school is made a torture, which as it brings forth 
delight in the end when learning is held fast, so should it 
pass on ver}' pleasantly by the way, while it is in learning." ♦ 

{PP. 33-) 

§ lo. (6) Among the many changes brought about in the 

nineteenth century we find little that can compare in impor- 
tance with the advance in the education of women. In the 
last century, whenever a woman exercised her mental powers 
she had to do it by stealth, f and her position was degraded 
indeed when compared not only with her descendants of 
the nineteenth century, but also with her ancestors of the 
sixteenth. This I know has been disputed by some authori- 
ties, e.g.^ by the late Professor Brewer : but to others, e.g.^ to 
a man who, as regards honesty and wisdom, has had few equals 
and no superiors in investigating the course of education, I 
mean the late Joseph Payne, this educational superiority of 
the women of Elizabeth's time has seemed to be entirely 



• Quaint as we find Mulcaster in his mode of expression, the thing 
expressed is sometimes rather what we should expect from Herbert 
Spencer than from a schoolmaster of the Renascence. I have met with 
nothing more modern in thought than the following: "In time all 
learning may be brought into one tongue, and that natural to the in- 
habitant : so that schooling for tongues may prove needless, as once 
they were not needed ; but it can never fall out that arts and sciences in 
their right nature shall be but most necessary for any commonwealth 
that is not given over unto too too much barbarousness. " {.PP., 240.) 

t " Subject to a regulation like that of the ancient Spartans, the 
theft of knowledge in our sex is only connived at while carefully con- 
cealed, and if displayed [is] punished with disgrace." So says Mrs. 
Barbauld, and I have met with similar passages in other female writers. 



MULCASTER. 99 



7. Training of Teachers. 



beyond question. On this point Mulcaster's evidence is 
very valuable, and, to me at least, conclusive. He not only 
" admits young maidens to learn," but says that " custom 
stands for him," and that "the custom of my country 
. . . hath made the maidens' train her own approved 
travail." {FF., p. 167.) 

§ II. (7) Of all the educational reforms of the nineteenth 
century by far the most fruitful and most expansive is, in my 
opinion, the training of teachers. In this, as in most educa- 
tional matters, the English, though advancing, are in the 
rear. Far more is made of " training " on the Continent and 
in the United States than in England. And yet we made a 
good start. Our early writers on education saw that the 
teacher has immense influence, and that to turn this influence 
to good account he must have made a study of his profession 
and have learnt " the best that has been thought and done " 
in it. Every occupation in life has a traditional capital of 
knowledge and experience, and those who intend to follow 
the business, whatever it may be, are required to go through 
some kind of training or apprenticeship before they earn 
wages. To this rule there is but one exception. In English 
elementary schools children are paid to " teach " children, 
and in the higher schools the beginner is allowed to blunder 
at the expense of his first pupils into whatever skill he may 
in the end manage to pick up. But our English practice 
received no encouragement from the early English writers, 
Mulcaster, Brinsley,* and Hoole. 



• John Brinsley (the elder) who married a sister of Bishop Hall's and 
kept school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch (was it the Grammar School?) was 
one of the best English writers on education. In bis Consolation for ouf 
Grammar Sckooles, published early in the sixteen hundreds, he says j 



lOO MULCASTER. 

Training college at the Universities. 

As far as I am aware the first suggestion of a training 
college for teachers came from Mulcaster. He schemed 
seven special colleges at the University ; and of these one 
is for teachers. Some of his suggestions, e.g., about 
"University Readers" have lately been adopted, though 
without acknowledgment ; and as the University of 
Cambridge has since 1S79 acknowledged the existence of 
teachers, and appointed a " Teachers' Training Syndicate," 
we may perhaps in a few centuries more carry out his scheme, 
and 'have training colleges at Oxford and Cambridge.* 
Some of the reasons he gives us have not gone out of date 
with his English. They are as follows : — 

"And why should not these men (the teachers) have both 
this sufficiency in learning, and such room to rest in, thence 
to be chosen and set forth for the common service? Be 
either children or schools so small a portion of our 

" Amongst others myself having first had long experience of the mani- 
fold evils which grow from the ignorance of a right order of teaching, 
and afterwards some gracious taste of the sweetness that is to be found 
in the better courses truly known and practised, I have betaken me 
almost wholly, for many years unto this weighty work, and that not 
without much comfort, through the goodness of our blessed God." (p. i.) 
* ' And for the most part wherein any good is done, it is ordinarily effected 
by the endless vexation of the painful master, the extreme labour and 
terror of the poor children with enduring far overmuch and long severity. 
Now whence proceedeth all this but because so few of those who under- 
take this function are acquainted with any good method or right order 
of instruction fit for a grammar school?" (p. 2.) It is sad to think 
how many generations have since suffered from teachers "unacquainted 
with any good method or right order of instruction." And it seems to 
justify Goethe's dictum, " £>fr EngUinder ist eigentlich ohtie Intelligenz" 
that for several generations to come this evil will be but partially abated. 
* At Cambridge (as also in London and Edinburgh) there is already 
a Training College for Women Teachers in Secondary Schools. 



MULCASTER. 101 



M.'s reasons for training teachers. 

multitude ? or is the framing of young minds, and the train- 
ing of their bodies so mean a point of cunning ? Be school- 
masters in this Realm such a paucity, as they are not even 
in good sadness to be soundly thought on? If the chancel 
have a minister, the belfry hath a master : and where youth 
is, as it is eachwhere, there must be trainers, or there will be 
worse. He that will not allow of this careful provision for 
such a seminary of masters, is most unworthy either to have 
had a good master himself, or hereafter to have a good one 
for his. Why should not teachers be well provided for, to 
continue their whole life in the school, as Divines, Laivyers, 
Physicians do in their several professions? Thereby 
judgment, cunning, and discretion will grow in them : and 
masters would prove old men, and such as Xenophon setteth 
over children in the schooling of Cyrus. Whereas now, the 
school being used but for a shift, afterward to pass thence to 
the other professions, though it send out very sufficient men 
to them, itself remaineth too too naked, considering the 
necessity of the thing. I conclude, therefore, that this 
trade requireth a particular college, for these four enures. 
I. First, for the subject being the mean to mp.ke or mar the 
whole fry of our State. 2. Secondly, for the number, 
whether of them that are to learn, or of them that are to 
teach. 3, Thirdly, for the necessity of the piofession, which 
may not be spared. 4. Fourthly, for the matter of their study, 
which is comparable to the greatest professions, for language, 
for judgment, for skill how to train, for variety in all points 
of learning, wherein the framing of the mind, and the 
exercising of the body craveth exquisite consideration, 
beside the staidness of the person." {PP., pp. 248, 9.) 

§ 12. Though once a celebrated man, and moreover 
the master of Edmund Spenser, Mulcaster has been long 



102 MULCASTER. 



M.'s Life and Writings. 



forgotten; but when the history of education in England 
comes to be written, the historian will show that few school- 
masters in the fifteen hundreds or since were so enlightened 
as the first headmaster of Merchant Taylors'.* 



• All we know of his life may soon be told. Richard Mulcaster was 
a Cumberland man of good family, an " esquier borne," as he calls him- 
self, who was at Eton, then King's College, Cambridge, then at Christ 
Church, Oxford. His birth year was probably 1530 or 1531, and he 
became a student of Christ Church in 1555. In 1558 he settled as a 
schoolmaster in London, and was elected first headmaster of Merchant 
Taylors' School, which dates from 156 1. Here he remained twenty- 
five years, i.e., till 1586. Whether he then became, as H. B. Wilson 
says, surmaster of St. Paul's, I cannot determine, but "he came in" 
highmaster in 1596, and held that office for twelve years. Though in 
1598 Elizabeth made him rector of Stanford Rivers, there can be no 
doubt that he did not give up the highmastershlp till 1608, when he must 
have been about 77 years old. He died at Stanford Rivers three years 
later. While at Merchant Taylors', viz., in 1 581 and 1582, he published 
the two books which have secured for him a permanent place in the 
history of education in England. The first was his Positions, the 
second " The first part " (and, as it proved, the only part) of his 
Ele7nentarie. Of his other writings, his Cato Christianus sttms to have 
been the most important, and a very interesting quotation from it has 
been preserved in Robotham's Preface to ihtjanua of Comenius ; but 
the book itself is lost: at least I never heard of a copy, and I have 
sought in vain in the British Museum, and at the University Libraries 
of Oxford and Cambridge. His Catechismus Paulinus is a rare book, 
but Rev. J. H. Lupton has found and described a copy in the Bodleian. 



IX. 

RATICHIUS. 

(1571-1635.) 



§ I. The history of Education in the fifteen hundreds 
tells chiefly of two very different classes of men. First we 
have the practical men, who set themselves to supply the 
general demand for instruction in the classical languages. 
This class includes most of the successful schoolmasters, such 
as Sturm, Trotzendorf, Neander, and the Jesuits. The other 
class were thinkers, who never attempted to teach, but 
merely gave form to truths which would in the end affect 
teaching. These were especially Rabelais and Montaigne. 

§ 2. With the sixteen hundreds we come to men who 
have earned for themselves a name unpleasant in our ears, 
although it might fittingly be applied to all the greatest 
benefactors of the human race. I mean the name of 
Innovators. These men were not successful ; at least they 
seemed unsuccessful to their contemporaries, who contrasted 
the promised results with the actual. But their efforts were 
by no means thrown away : and posterity at least, has 
acknowledged its obligations to them. One sees now that 
they could hardly have expected justice in their own time. 
It is safe to adopt the customary plan ; it is safe to speculate 
how that plan may and should be altered; but it is dangerous 



104 RATICHIUS. 



Principles of the Innovators. 



to attempt to translate new thought into new action, and 
boldly to advance without a track, trusting to principles 
which may, like the compass, show you the right direction, 
but, like the compass, will give you no hint of the obstacles 
that lie before you. 

The chief demands made by the Innovators have been : 
ist, that the study of things should precede, or be united 
with, the study of words {v. Appendix, p. 538) ; 2nd, that 
knowledge should be communicated, where possible, by 
appeals to the senses; 3rd, that all linguistic study should 
begin with that of the mother-tongue ; 4th, that Latin and 
Greek should be taught to such boys only as would be likely 
to complete a learned education ; 5th, that physical educa- 
tion should be attended to in all classes of society for the 
sake of health, not simply with a view to gentlemanly 
accomplishments; 6th, that a new method of teaching 
should be adopted, framed "■ according to Nature." 

Their notions of method have, of course, been very 
various ; but their systems mostly agree in these 
particulars : — 

I. They proceed from the concrete to the abstract, giving 
some knowledge of the thing itself before the rules which 
refer to it. 2. They employ the student in analysing matter 
put before him, rather than in working synthetically 
according to precept. 3. They require the student to teach 
himself a.nd investigate for himself under the superintendence 
and guidance of the master, rather than be taught by the 
master and receive anything on the master's authority. 
4. They rely on the interest excited in the pupil by the 
acquisition of knowledge, and renounce coercion. 5. Only 
that which is understood may be committed to memory 
{v. supra, p. 74, n), 



RATICHIUS. 105 



R.'s Address to the Diet. 



§ 3. The first of the Innovators was Wolfgang Raticliius, 
who, oddly enough, is known to posterity by a name he and 
his contemporaries never heard of. His father's name was 
Radtke or Ratk^, and the son having received a University 
education, translated this into Ratichius. With our usual 
impatience of redundant syllables, we have attempted to 
reduce 'the word to its original dimensions, and in the 
process have hit upon Ratich, which is a new name 
altogether. 

Ratke (to adopt the true form of the original) was con- 
nected, as Basedow was a hundred and fifty years later, 
with Holstein and Hamburg. He was born at Wilster in 
Holstein in 1571, and studied at Hamburg and at the 
University of Rostock. He afterwards travelled to 
Amsterdam and to England, and it was perhaps owing to 
his residence in this country that he was acquainted with the 
new philosophy of Bacon. We next hear of him at the 
Electoral Diet, held as usual in Frankfurt-on-Main, in 16 12. 
He was then over forty years old, and he had elaborated a 
new scheme for teaching. Like all inventors, he was fully 
impressed with the importance of his discovery, and he sent 
to the assembled Princes an address, in which he undertook 
some startling performances. He was able, he said : (i) to 
teach young or old Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, or other 
languages, in a very short time and without any difficulty ; 
(2) to establish schools in which all arts should be taught 
and extended; (3) to introduce and peaceably establish 
throughout the German Empire a uniform speech, a uniform 
government, and (still more wonderful) a uniform religion. 

§ 4. Naturally enough the address arrested the 
attention of the Princes. The Landgraf Lewis of Darm- 
stadt thought the matter worthy of examination, and he 



I06 RATICHIUS. 



At Augsburg. At Koethen. 



deputed two learned men, Jung and Helwig, to confer with 
Ratke. Their report was entirely favourable, and they did 
all they could to get for Ratke the means of carrying his 
scheme into execution. " We are," writes Helwig, " in bond- 
age to Latin. The Greeks and Saracens would never have 
done so much for posterity if they had spent their youth in 
acquiring a foreign tongue. We must study bur own 
language, and then sciences. Ratichius has discovered the 
art of teaching according to Nature. By his method, 
languages will be quickly learned, so that we shall have time 
for sefence ; and science will be learned even better still, as 
the natural system suits best with science, which is the study 
of Nature." Moved by this report the Town Council of 
Augsburg agreed to give Ratke the necessary power over 
their schools, and accompanied by Helwig, he accordingly 
went to Augsburg and set to work. But the good folks of 
Augsburg were like children, who expect a plant as soon as 
they have sown the seed. They were speedily dissatisfied, 
and Ratke and Helwig left Augsburg, the latter much dis- 
couraged but still faithful to his friend. Ratke went to 
Frankfurt again, and a Commission was appointed to con- 
sider his proposals, but by its advice Ratke was " allowed to 
try elsewhere." 

§ 5. He would never have had a fair chance had he not 
had a firm friend in the Duchess Dorothy of Weimar. Then, 
as now, we find women taking the lead in everything which 
promises to improve education, and this good Duchess sent 
for Ratke and tested his method by herself taking lessons of 
him in Hebrew. With this adult pupil his plans seem to 
have answered well, and she always continued his admirer 
and advocate. By her advice her brother. Prince Lewis of 
Anhalt-Koethen, decided that the great discovery should not 
be lost for want of a fair trial; so he called Ratke to Koethen 



RATICHIUS. 107 



Failure at Koethen. 



and complied with all his demands. A band of teachers 
sworn to secrecy were first of all instructed in the art by 
Ratke himself. Next, schools with very costly appliances 
were provided, and lastly some 500 little Koetheners — boys 
and girls — were collected and handed over to Ratke to work 
his wonders with. 

§ 6. It never seems to have occurred either to Ratke or 
his friends or the Prince that all the principles and methods 
that ever were or ever will be established could not enable a 
man without experience to organize a school of 500 children. 
A man who had never been in the water might just '-as well 
plunge into the sea at once and trust to his knowledge of 
the laws of fluid pressure to save him from drowning. There 
are endless details to be settled which would bewilder any 
one without experience. Some years ago school-buildings 
were provided for one of our county schools, and the council 
consulted a master of great experience who strongly urged 
them not to start as they had intended with 300 boys. " / 
would not undertake such a thing," said he. When pressed 
for his reason, he said quietly, " I would not be responsible 
for the boots" I have no doubt Ratke had to come down 
from his principles and his new method to deal with 
numberless little questions of caps, bonnets, late children, 
broken windows, and the like ; and he was without the tact 
and the experience which enable many ordinary men and 
women, who know nothing of principles, to settle such 
matters satisfactorily. 

§ 7. Years afterwards there was another thinker much 
more profound and influential than Ratke, who was quite 
as incompetent to organize. I mean Pestalozzi. But 
Pestalozzi had one great advantage over Ratke. He 
attached all his assistants to him by inspiring them with 



I08 RATICHIUS. 



German in the school. R.'s services. 

love and reverence of himself. This made up for many 
deficiencies. But Ratke was not like the fatherly, self- 
sacrificing Pestalozzi. He leads us to suspect him of being 
an impostor by making a mystery of his invention, and he 
never could keep the peace with his assistants. 

§ 8. So, as might have been expected, the grand ex- 
periment failed. The Prince, exasperated at being placed 
in a somewhat ridiculous position, and possibly at the 
serious loss of money into the bargain, revenged himself on 
Ratke by throwing him into prison, nor would he release 
him till he had made him sign a paper in which he admitted 
that he had undertaken more than he was able to fulfil. 

§ 9. This was no doubt the case; and yet Ratke had 
done more for the Prince than the Prince for Ratke. In 
Koethen had been opened the first German school in which 
the children were taught to make a study of the German 
language. 

Ratke never recovered from his failure at Koethen, and 
nothing memorable is recorded of him afterwards. He 
died in 1635. 

§ 10. Much was written by Ratke ; much has been 
written about him ; and those who wish to know more than 
the few particulars I have given may find all they want in 
Raumer or Barnard. The Innovator failed in gaining the 
applause of his contemporaries, and he does not seem to 
stand high in the respect of posterity ; but he was a pioneer 
in the art of didactics, and the rules which Raumer has 
gathered from the Methodus Institutionis nova .... 
Ratichii et Ratichianorum, published by Rhenius at 
Leipzig in 1626, raise some of the most interesting points 
to which a teacher's attention can be directed. I will 
therefore state them, and say briefly w-hat I think of them. 



RATICHIUS. 109 



I. Follow Nature. 2. One thing at a time. 

§ II. I. In everything we should follow the order of 
Nature. There is a certain natural sequence along which the 
human int-'Higence tnoves in acquiring knowledge. This 
sequence tnust be studied, and instruction must be based on 
the knowledge of it. 

Here, as in all teaching of the Reformers, we find 
*' Nature " used as if the word stood for some definite idea. 
From the time of the Stoics we have been exhorted to 
" follow Nature." In more modern times the demand was 
well formulated by Picus of Mirandola : " Take no heed 
what thing many men do, but what thing the very law of 
Nature, what thing very reason, what thing our Lord Himself 
showeth thee to be done." (Trans, by Sir Thomas More, 
quoted in Seebohm, Oxford Reformers.) 

Pope, always happy in expression but not always clear in 
thought, talks of — 

" Unerring Nature, still divinely bright, 
One clear, unchanged, and universal light." 

{^Essay on C, i, 70.) 

But as Dr. W. T. Harris has well pointed out {St. Louis, 
Mo., School Report, '78, '79, p. 217), with this word "Nature" 
writers on education do a great deal of juggling. Some 
times they use it for the external world, including in it man's 
unconscious growth, sometimes they make it stand for the 
ideal. What sense does Ratke attach to it ? One might 
have some difficulty in determining. Perhaps the best 
meaning we can nowadays find for his rule is : study 
Psychology. 

§ 12. II. One thing at a time. Master one subject 
before you take up another. For each language master a 
single book. Go over it again and again till you have 
completely made it your own. 



no RATICHIUS. 



3. Over and over again. 



In its crude /orm this rule could not be carried out. If 
the attempt were made the results would be no better than 
from the six months' course of Terence under Ratke. It is 
"against all Nature" to go on hammering away at one 
thing day after day without any change; and there is a 
point beyond which any attempt at thoroughness must end 
in simple stagnation. The rule then would have two fatal 
drawbacks: ist, it would lead to monotony; 2nd, it would 
require a completeness of learning which to the young 
would be impossible. But in these days no one follows 
Ratke. On the other hand, concentration in study is often 
neglected, and our time-tables afford specimens of the most 
ingenious mosaic work, in which everything has a place, but 
in so small a quantity that the learners never find out what 
each thing really is. School subjects are like the clubs of 
the eastern tale, which did not give out their medicinal 
properties till the patient got warm in the use of them. 

When a good hold on a subject has once been secured, 
short study, with considerable intervals between, may suffice 
to keep up and even increase the knowledge already 
obtained ; but in matters of any difficulty, e.g., in a new 
language, no start is ever made without allotting to it much 
more than two or three hours a week. It is perhaps a 
mistake to suppose that if a good deal of the language may 
be learnt by giving it ten hours a week, twice that amount 
might be acquired in twenty hours. It is a much greater 
mistake if we think that one-fifth of the amount might be 
acquired in two hours. 

§ 13. III. 7'he same thing should be repeated over and 
over again. 

This is like the Jesuits' Repetitio Mater Studiorum; and the 
same notion was well developed 200 years later by Jacotot. 



RATICHIUS. Ill 



4. Everything through the mother-tongue. 

By Ratke's application of this rule some odd results were 
produced. The little Koetheners were drilled for German 
in a book of the Bible (Genesis was selected), and then for 
Latin in z play of Terence. 

Unlike many " theoretical notions " this precept of Ratke's 
comes more and more into favour as the schoolmaster 
increases in age and experience. But we must be careful to 
take our pupils with us ; and this repeating the same thing 
over and over may seem to them what marking time would 
seem to soldiers who wanted to rtiarch. Even more than 
the last rule this is open to the objections that monotony is 
deadening, and perfect attainment of anything but words 
impossible. In keeping to a subject then we must not rely 
on simple repetition. The rule now accepted is thus stated 
by Diesterweg : — "Every subject of instruction should be 
viewed from as many sides as possible, and as varied 
exercises as possible should be set on one and the same 
thing." The art of the master is shown in disguising 
repetition and bringing known things into new connection, 
so that they may partially at least retain their freshness. 

§ 14. IV. First let the mother-tongue be studied, and 
teach everything through the mother-tongue, so that the 
learner's attention may not be diverted to the language. 

We saw that Sturm, the leading schoolmaster of Renas- 
cence, tried to suppress the mother-tongue and substitute 
Latin for it. Against this a vigorous protest was made in 
this country by Mulcaster. And our language was never 
conquered by a foreign language, as German was conquered 
first by Latin and then by French. But " the tongues " 
have always had the lion's share of attention in the school- 
room, and though many have seen and Milton has said 
that "our understanding cannot in this body found itself 



112 RATICHIUS. 



5. Nothing on compulsion. 



but on sensible things," this truth is only now making its 
way into the schoolroom. Hitherto the foundation has 
hardly been laid before " the schoolmaster has stept in 
and staid the building by confounding the language."* 
Ratke's protest against this will always be put to his credit 
in the history of education. 

§ 15. V. Everything without constraint. "The young 
should not be beaten to make them learn or for not having 
learnt. It is compulsion and stripes that set young people 
against studying. Boys are often beaten for not having 
learnt, but they would have learnt had they been well 
taught. The human understanding is so formed that it 
has pleasure in receiving what it should retain : and this 
pleasure you destroy by your harshness. Where the master 
is skilful and judicious, the boys will take to him and to 
their lessons. Folly lurks indeed in the heart of the child 
and must be driven out with the rod; but not by the 
teacher." 

Here at least there is nothing original in Ratke's precept. 
A goodly array of authorities have condemned learning 
** upon compulsion." This array extends at least as far as 

* Lectures and Essays: English in School, hy]. R. Seeley, p. 222. 
Elsewhere in the same lecture (p. 229) Professor Seeley says: "The 
schoolmaster might set this right. Every boy that enters the school is 
a talking creature. He is a performer, in his small degree, upon the 
same instrument as Milton and Shakespeare. Only do not sacrifice 
this advantage. Do not try by artificial and laborious processes to give 
him a new knowledge before you have developed that which he has 
already. Train and perfect the gift of speech, unfold all that is in it, 
and you train at the same time the power of thought and the power of 
intellectual sympathy, you enable your pupil to think the thoughts and 
to delight in the words of great philosophers and poets." I wish this 
lecture were published separately. 



RATICHIUS. 113 



6. Nothing to be learnt by heart. 

from Plalo to Bishop Dupanloup. "In the case of the 
mind, no study pursued under compulsion remains rooted 
in the memory," says Plato.* *' Everything depends," says 
Dupanloup, " on what the teacher induces his pupils to do 
freely: for authority is not constraint — it ought to be 
inseparable from respect and devotion. I will respect 
human liberty in the smallest child." As far as I have 
observed there is only one class of persons whom the 
authorities from Plato to Dupanloup have failed to 
convince, and that is the schoolmasters. This is the class 
to which I have belonged, and I should not be prepared to 
take Plato's counsel : " Bring up your boys in their studies 
without constraint and in a playful manner." {lb.) At the 
same time I see the importance of self-activity, and there is 
no such thing as self-activity upon compulsion. You can 
no more hurry thought with the cane than you can hurry a 
snail with a pin. So without interest there can be no 
proper learning. Interest must be aroused — even in Latin 
Grammar. But if they could choose their own occupation, 
the boys, however interested in their work, would probably 
find something else more interesting still. We cannot get 
on, and never shall, without the 7nust. 

§ 16. VI. Nothing may be iearnt by heart. 

It has always been a common mistake in the schoolroom 
to confound the power ol lunning along a sequence of 
sounds with a mastery of the thought with which those 
sounds thould be connected. But, as I have remaiked 
elsewhere {supra, p. 74, note), the two things, though different, 
are not opposed. Too much is likely to be made of learn- 
ing by heart, foi of the two things the pupils find it the 

* Rep. bk. vii, 536, adf. ; Davies and Vaughan, p. 264. 
i 



114 RATICHIUS. 



7. Uniformity. 8. Ne modus rei ante rem. 

easier, and the teacher the more easily tested. We may, 
however^ guard against the abuse without giving up the use. 

§ 17. VII.* Uniformity in all things. 

Both in the way of learning, and in the books, and the 
rules, a uniform method should be observed, says Ratke. 

The right plan is for the learner to acquire familiar 
knowledge of one subject or part of a subject, and then use 
this ^or comparison when he learns beyond it. If the same 
method of learning is adopted throughout, this will render 
comparison more easy and more striking.f 

§ 18. VIII. The thing itself should come first, then 
whatever explains it. 

To those who do not with closed eyes cling to the 
method of their predecessors, this rule may seem founded 
on common-sense. Would any one but a " teacher," or a 
writer of school books, ever think of making children who 
do not know a word of French, learn about the French 
accents? And yet what Ratke said 250 years ago has not 
been disproved since : "Accidens rei priusquam rem ipsam 
quaerere prorsus absonum et absurdum esse vidttur," 
which I take to mean : " Before the learner has a notion 
of the thing itself, it is folly to worry him about its accidents 
or even its properties, essential or unessential Ne modus 
rei ante rem. \ 



• In Buisson i^Dictionnaire) No. 7 is "The children must have 
frequent play, and a break after every lesson." Raumer connects this 
with No. 6, and says: "breaks were rendered necessary by Ratke's 
plan, which kept the learners far too silent." 

+ In the matter of grammar Ratke's advice, so long disregarded, has 
recently been followed in the " Parallel Grammar Series," published 
by Messrs. Sonnenschem. 

X The ordinary teaching of almost every subject offers illustrations of 



RATICHIUS. 115 



9. Per inductionem omnia. 



This rule of Ratke's warns teachers against a very 
common mistake. The subject is to them in full view, 
and they make the most minute observations on it. But 
these things cannot be seen by their pupils ; and even if the 
beginner could see these minutiae, he would find in them 
neither interest nor advantage. But when we apply Ratke's 
principle more widely, we find ourselves involved in the 
great question whether our method should be based on 
synthesis or analysis, a question which Ratke's method did 
not settle for us. 

§ 19. IX. Every tiling by experience and examination 
of the parts. Or as he states the rule in Latin : Per 
inductionem et experimentum omnia. 

Nothing was to be received on authority, and this 
disciple of Bacon went beyond his master and took for his 
motto : Vetusias cessit, ratio vicit ("Age has yielded, reason 
prevailed"); as if reason must be brand-new, and truth 
might wax old and be ready to vanish away. 



the neglect of this principle. Take, e.g., the way in which children are 
usually taught to read. First, they have to say the alphabet — a very 
easy task as it seems to us, but if we met with a strange word of 
twenty-six syllables, and that not a compound word, but one of which 
every syllable was new to us, we might have some difficulty in 
remembering it. And yet such a word would be to us what the 
alphabet is to a child. When he can perform this feat, he is next 
required to learn the visual symbols of the sounds and to connect these 
with the vocal symbols. Some of the vocal symbols bring the child in 
contact with the sound itself, but most are simply conventional. What 
notion does the child get of the aspirate from the name of the letter h ? 
Having learnt twenty-six visual and twenty-six vocal symbols, and 
connected them together, the child Jifially comes to the sounds (over 40 
in number) which the symbols are supposed to represent. 



1 16 RATICHIUS. 



R.'s method for language. 



§ 20. From these rules of his we see that Ratke did 
much to formulate the main principles of Didactics. He 
also deserves to be remembered among the methodizers 
who have tackled the problem — how to teach a language. 

At Kothen the instructor of the lowest class had to talk 
with the children, and to take pains with their pronunciation. 
When they knew their letters (Ickelsam.er's plan for reading 
Ratke seems to have neglected) the teacher read the Book 
of Genesis through to them, each chapter twice over, requir- 
ing the children to follow with eye and finger. Then the 
teacher began the chapter again, and read about four lines 
only, which the children read after him. When the book had 
been worked over in this way, the children were required to 
read it through without assistance. Reading once secured, 
the master proceeded to grammar. He explained, say, what 
a substantive was, and then showed instances in Genesis, 
and next required the children to point out others. In 
this way the grammar was verified throughout from Genesis, 
and the pupils were exercised in declining and conjugating 
words taken from the Book. 

When they advanced to the study of Latin, they were 
given a translation of a play of Terence, and worked 
over it several times before they were shown the Latin. 

The master then translated the play to them, each half- 
hour's work twice over. At the next reading, the master 
translated the first half-hour, and the boys translated the 
same piece the second. Having thus got through the play, 
they began again, and only the boys translated. After this 
there was a course of grammar, which was applied to the 
Terence, as the grammar of the mother-tongue had been 
to Genesis. Finally, the pupils were put through a course 
of exercises, in which they had to turn into Latin sentences 



RATICHIUS. 117 



R.'s method and Ascham's. 



imitated from the Terence, and differing from the original 
only in the number or person used, 

Raumer gives other particulars, and quotes largely from 
the almost unreadable account of Kromayer, one of Ratke's 
followers, in order that we may have, as he says, a notion of 
the tediousness of the method. No doubt anyone who has 
followed me hitherto, will consider that this point has been 
brought out already with sufficient distinctness. 

§ 21. When we compare Ratke's method with Ascham's, 
we find several points of agreement. Ratke would begin 
the study of a language by taking a model book, and work- 
ing through it with the pupil a great many times. Ascham 
did the same. Each lecture according to his plan would 
be gone over " a dozen times at the least." Both construed 
to the pupil instead of requiring him to make out the sense 
for himself. Both Ratke and Ascham taught grammar not 
by itself, but in connection with the model book. 

But the points of difference are still more striking. In 
one respect Ratke's plan was weak. It gave the pupils 
little to do, and made no use of the pen. Ascham's was 
better in this and also as a training in accuracy. Ascham 
was, as I have pointed out, a "complete retainer." Ratke 
was a " rapid impressionist." His system was a good deal 
like that which had great vogue in the early part of this 
century as the " Hamiltonian System." From the first the 
language was to be laid on " very thick," in the belief that 
" some of it was sure to stick." The impressions would be 
slight, and there would at first be much confusion between 
words which had a superficial resemblance, but accuracy 
it was thought would come in time. 

§ 22. The contest between the two schools of thought 
of which Ascham and Ratke may be taken as representatives 



Il8 RATICHIUS. 



Slow progress in methods. 



has continued till now, and within the last few years both 
parties have made great advances in method. But in 
nothing does progress seem slower than in education ; and 
the plan of grammar-teaching in vogue fifty years ago was 
inferior to the methods advocated by the old writers.* 



* See Mr. E. E. Bowen's vigorous essay on "Teaching by means of 
Grammar," in Essays on a Liberal Education, 1867. 

I have returned to the subject of language-learning in § 15 of Jacotot 
in the note. See page 426. 



X. 

COMENIUS, 

(1592-1671). 



§ 1. One of the most hopeful signs of the improvement 
of education is the rapid advance in the last thirty years of 
the fame of Comenius, and the growth of a large literature 
about the man and his ideas. Twenty-three years ago, when 
I first became interested in him, his name was hardly known 
beyond Germany. In English there was indeed an ex- 
cellent life of him prefixed to a translation of his School of 
Infancy ; but this work, by Daniel Benham (London, 1858), 
had not then, and has not now, anything like the circulation it 
deserves. A much more successful book has been Professor 
S. S. Laurie's John Affios Comenius (Cambridge University 
Press), and this is known to most, and should be to all, 
English students of education. By the Germans and 
French Comenius is now recognised as the man who first 
treated education in a scientific spirit, and who bequeathed 
the rudiments of a science to later ages. On this account 
the great library of pedagogy at Leipzig has been named in 
his honour the " Comenius Stiftung." 

§ 2. John Amos Komensky or Comenius, the son of a 
miller, who belonged to the Moravian Brethren, was born, 



120 COMENIUS. 



Early years. His first book. 



at the Moravian village of Niwnic, in 1592. Of his early 
life we know nothing but what he himself tells us in the 
following passage : — " Losing both my parents while I was 
yet a child, I began, through the neglect of my guardians, 
but at sixteen years of age to taste of the Latin tongue. 
Yet by the goodness of God, that taste bred such a thirst 
in me, that I ceased not from that time, by all means and 
endeavours, to labour (or the repainng of my lost years; 
and now not only for myself, but for the good of others 
also. For I could not but pity others also in this respect, 
especially in my own nation, which is too slothful and 
careless in matter of learning. Thereupon I was continually 
full of thoughts for the finding out of some means whereby 
more might be inflamed with the love of learning, and 
whereby learning itself might be made more compendious, 
both in matter of the charge and cost, and of the labour 
belonging thereto, that so the youth might be brought by 
a more easy method, unto some notable proficiency in 
learning."* With these thoughts in his head, he pursued 
his studies in several German towns, especially at Herborn 
in Nassau. Here he saw the Report on Ratke's method 
published in 1612 for the Universities of Jena and Giessen; 
and we find him shortly afterwards writing his first book, 
GrammaticcB facilioris Fracepta, which was published at 
Prag in 16 16. On his return to Moravia, he was appointed 
to the Brethren's school at Prerau, but (to use his own 
words) " being shortly after at the age of twenty-four called 
to the service of the Church, because that divine Junction 
challenged all my endeavours (divinumque HOC AGE prae 



Preface to the Prodromut. 



COMENIUS. 121 



Troubles. Exile. 



oculis erat) these scholastic cares were laid aside.* His 
pastoral charge was at Fulneck, the headquarters of the 
Brethren. As such it soon felt the effects of the Battle ol 
Frag, being in the following year (1621) taken and 
plundered by the Spaniards. On this occasion Comenius 
lost his MSS. and almost everything he possessed. The 
year after his wife died, and then his only child. In 1624 
all Protestant ministers were banished, and in 1627 a new 
decree extended the banishment to Protestants of every 
description. Comenius bore up against wave after wave 
of calamity with Christian courage and resignation, and 
his writings at this period were of great value to his fellow- 
sufferers. 

§ 3. For a time he found a hiding-place in the family 
of a Bohemian nobleman. Baron Sadowsky, at Slaupna, in 
the Bohemian mountains, and in this retirement, his atten- 
tion was again directed to the science of teaching. The 
Baron had engaged Stadius, one of the proscribed, to 
educate his three sons, and, at Stadius' request, Comenius 
wrote " some canons of a better method," for his use. We 
find him, too, endeavouring to enrich the literature of his 
mother-tongue, making a metrical translation of the Psalms 
of David, and even writing imitations of Virgil, Ovid, and 
Cato's Distichs. 

In 1627, however, the persecution waxed so hot, that 
Comenius, with most of the Brethren, had to flee their 
country, never to return. On crossing the border, Comenius 
and the exiles who accompanied him knelt down, and 



* Preface to Prodromus, first edition, p. 40 ; second edition (1639), 
p. 78. The above is Hartlib's translation, see A Reformation of 
Schools, &'£., pp. 46, 47. 



122 COMENIUS. 



Pedagogic studies at Leszna. 



prayed that God would not suffer His truth to fail out of 
their native land. 

§ 4. Comenius had now, as Michelet says, lost his country 
and found his country, which was the world. Many of the 
banished, and Comenius among them, settled at the Polish 
town of Leszna, or, as the Germans call it, Lissa, near the 
Silesian frontier. Here there was an old-established school 
of the Brethren, in which Comenius found employment. 
Once more engaged in education, he earnestly set about 
improving the traditional methods. As he himself says,* 
" Being by God's permission banished my country with 
divers others, and forced for my sustenance to apply myself 
to the instruction of youth, I gave my mind to the perusal of 
divers authors, and lighted upon many which in this age have 
made a beginning in reforming the method of studies, as 
Ratichius, Helvicus, Rhenius, Ritterus, Glaumius, Csecilius, 
and who indeed should have had the first place, Joannes 
Valentinus Andrese, a man of a nimble and clear brain ; 
as also Campanella and the Lord Verulam, those famous 
restorers of philosophy ; — by reading of whom I was raised 
in good hope, that at last those so many various sparks 
would conspire into a flame ; yet observing here and there 
some defects and gaps as it were, I could not contain 
myself from attempting something that might rest upon an 
immovable foundation, and which, if it could be once found 
out, should not be subject to any ruin. Therefore, after 
many workings and tossings of my thoughts, by reducing 
everything to the immovable laws of Nature, I lighted upon 



* Preface to Prodromus^ first edition, p. 40 ; second edition, p. 79. 
A Reformation, St'c, p. 47. 



COMENIUS. 123 



Didactic written. Janua published. Pansophy. 

my Didactica Alagna, which shows the art of readily and 
solidly teaching all men all things." 

§ 5. This work did not immediately see the light, but 
in 1631 Comenius published a book which made him and 
the little Polish town where he lived known throughout 
Europe and beyond it. This was the Janua Li?}guarum 
Reserata^ or " Gate of Tongues unlocked." Writing about 
it many years afterwards he says that he never could have 
imagined that that little work, fitted only for children (J)uerih 
istiid opuscuhmi), would have been received with applause 
by all the learned world. Letters of congratulation came 
to him from every quarter ; and the work was translated 
not only into Greek, Bohemian, Polish, Swedish, Belgian, 
English, French, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, but also into 
Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and even *' Mongolian, which is 
familiar to all the East Indies." (Dedication of Schola 
Liidus in vol. i. of collected works.) 

§ 6. Incited by the applause of the learned, Comenius 
now planned a scheme of universal knowledge, to impart 
which a series of works would have to be written, far 
exceeding what the resources and industry of one man, 
however great a scholar, could produce. He therefore 
looked about for a patron to supply money for the support 
of himself and his assistants, whilst these works were in 
progress. " The vastness of the labours I contemplate," 
he writes to a Polish nobleman, " demands that I should 
have a wealthy patron, whether we look at their extent, or 
at the necessity of securing assistants, or at the expenses 
generally." 

§ 7. At Leszna there seemed no prospect of his ob- 
taining the aid he required ; but his fame now procured him 
mvitations from distant countries. First he received a call 



124 COMENIUS. 



Samuel Hartlib. 



to improve the schools of Sweden. After declining this 
he was induced by his English friends to undertake a 
journey to London, where Parliament had shown its interest 
in the matter of education, and had employed Hartlib,* an 
enthusiastic admirer of Comenius, to attempt a reform. 
Probably through his family connections, Hartlib was on 
intimate terms with Comenius, and he had much influence 



* Very interesting are the " immeasurable labours and intellectual 
efforts" of Master Samuel Hartlib, whom Milton addresses as " a person 
sent hither by some good providence from a far country, to be the 
occasion and incitement of great good to this island." {Of Education, 
A.D. 1644.) See Masson'sZz/9 of Milton, vol. iii ; also biographical and 
bibliographical account of Hartlib by H. Dircks, 1S65. Hartlib's 
mother was English. His father, when driven out of Poland by triumph 
of the Jesuits, settledat Elbing, where there was an English" Company of 
Merchants " with John Dury for their chaplain. Hartlib came to 
England not later than 1628, and devoted himself to the furtherance of a 
variety of schemes for the public good. He was one of those rare 
beings who labour to promote the schemes of others as if they were their 
own. He could, as he says, " contribute but little " himself, but "being 
carried forth to watch for the opportunities of provoking others, who 
can do more, to improve their talents, I have found experimentally that 
my endeavours have not been without effect." (Quoted by Dircks, p. 
66.) The philosophy of Bacon seemed to have introduced an age of 
boundless improvement ; and men like Comenius, Hartlib, Petty, and 
Dury, caught the first unchecked enthusiasm. " There is scarce one 
day," so Hartlib wrote to Robert Boyle, " and one hour of the day or 
night, being brim full with all manner of objects of the most public and 
universal nature, but my soul is crying out ' Phosphore redde diem I 
Quid gaud ia nostra moraris ? Phosphore redde diem !' " 

But in this world Hartlib looked in vain for the day. The income of 
;^300 a year allowed him by Parliament was ;^700 in arrears at the 
Restoration, and he had then nothing to hope. His last years were 
attended by much physical suffering and by extreme poverty. He died 
as Evelyn thought at Oxford in 1662, but this is uncertain. 



COMENIUS. 125 



The Prodromus and Dilucidatio. 

on his career. It would seem that Comenius, though 
never tired of forming magnificent schemes, hung back from 
putting anything into a definite shape. After the appear- 
a:ice oi \hQ /anua Ltnguarum Rcserata, he planned dijanua 
Rerum, and even allowed that title to appear in " the list 
of new books to come forth at the next Mart at Frankford."* 
But again he hesitated, and withdrew the announcement. 
Here Hartlib came in, and forced him into print without 
his intending or even knowing it ('* prseter meam spem et 
me inconsulto "; preface to Conatiium PaJisophicorum 
Dilucidatio, 1638). Hartlib begged of Comenius a sketch 
of his great scheme, and with apologies to the author for 
not awaiting his consent, he published it at Oxford in 1637, 
under the title of Conatuum Comenianorum Prczludia. 
Comenius accepted tht fait accompli with the best grace he 
could — pleased at the stir the book made in the learned 
world, but galled by criticisms, especially by doubts of his 
orthodoxy. To refute the cavillers, he wrote a tract called 
Cofiatuum Pansophicorum Dilucidatio which was published 
in 1638. In 1639 Hartlib issued in London a new duo- 
decimo edition of the Prceludia (or as he then called it, 
Prodromus) and the Dilucidatio, adding a dissertation by 
Comenius on the study of Latin. Now, when everything 
seemed ripe for a change in education, and Comenius 
himself was on his way to England, Hartlib translated the 
Prodromus, and when Comenius had come he published it 
with the title, A Reformation of Schools, 1642. f 
§ 8. It was no doubt by Hartlib's influence that 



* Dilticidatio, Hartlib's trans. , p. 65. 

t The Dilucidation, as he calls it, is added. All the books above 
mentioned are in the Library of the British Museum under JComensky, 



126 COMENIUS. 



C. in London. Parliamentary scliemes. 

Parliament had been led to summon Comenius, and at any 
other time the visit might have been "the occasion of gi'eat 
good to this island," but inter artna silent tnagistriy and 
Comenius went away again. This is the account he himsell 
has left us : — 

" When seriously proposing to abandon the thorny studies 
of Didactics, and pass on to the pleasing studies of philo- 
sophical truth, I find myself again among the same thorns. 
. . . After the Pansophiie Frodrotnus had been published 
and dispersed through various kingdoms of Europe, many 
of the learned approved of the object and plan of the work, 
but despaired of its ever being accomplished by one man 
alone, and therefore advised that a college of learned men 
should be instituted to carry it into effect. Mr. S. Hartlib, 
who had forwarded the publication of the Pansophicz Pro- 
dromus in England, laboured earnestly in this matter, and 
endeavoured, by every possible means, to bring together for 
this purpose a number of men of intellectual activity. And 
at length, having found one or two, he invited me also, with 
many very strong entreaties. My people having consented 
to the journey, I came to London on the very day of the 
autumnal equinox (September 22, 1641), and there at 
last learnt that I had been invited by the order of the 
Parliament, But as the Parliament, the King having then 
gone to Scotland [August 10], was dismissed for a three 
months' recess [not quite three months, but from Septembei 
9 to October 20], I was detained there through the 
winter, my friends mustering what pansophic apparatus they 
could, though it was but slender. . . . The Parliament 
meanwhile, having re-assembled, and our presence being 
known, I had orders to»wait until they should have sufficient 
leisure from other business to appoint a Commission of 



COMENIUS. 127 



C. driven away by Civil War. 



learned and wise men from their body for hearing us and 
considering the grounds of our design. They communicated 
also beforehand their thoughts of assigning to us some 
college with its revenues, whereby a certain number of 
learned and industrious men called from all nations might 
t>e honourably maintained, either for a term of years or in 
perpetuity There was even named for the purpose T/ie 
Savoy in London ; Winchester College out of London was 
named; and again nearer the city, Chelsea College, inven- 
tories of which and of its revenues were communicated to 
us, so that nothing seemed more certain than that the 
design of the great Verulam, concerning the opening some- 
where of a Universal College, devoted to the advancement 
of the Sciences could be carried out. But the rumour of 
the Insurrection in Ireland, and of the massacre in one 
night of more than 200,000 English [October, November], 
and the sudden departure of the King from London 
[January 10, 1641-2], and the plentiful signs of the bloody 
war about to break out disturbed these plans, and obliged 
tne to hasten my return to my own people."* 

§ 9. While Comenius was in England, where he stayed 
till August, 1642, he received an invitation to France. 
This invitation, which he did not accept, came perhaps 
through his correspondent Mersenne, a man of great learning, 
who is said to have been highly esteemed and often con- 
sulted by Descartes. It is characteristic of the state of 
opinion in such matters in those days, that Mersenne tells 
Comenius of a certain Le Maire, by whose method a boy 
of six years old, might, with nine months' instruction, 
acquire a perfect knowledge of three languages. Mersenne 

* Masson's Mil/on, vol. iii, p. 224, Prof. Masson is quoting Opera 
Didactica, torn, ii, Introd. 



128 COMENIUS. 



In Sweden. Interviews with Oxenstiern. 

also had dreams of a universal alphabet, and even of a 
universal language. 

§ lo. Comenius' hopes of assistance in England being 
at an end, he thought of returning to Leszna ; but a lettei 
now reached him from a rich Dutch merchant, Lewis de 
Geer, who offered him a home and means for canying out 
his plans. This Lewis de Geer, " the Grand Almoner of 
Europe," as Comenius calls him, displayed a princely 
munificence in the assistance he gave the exiled Protestants. 
At this time he was living at Nordcoping in Sweden. 
Comenius having now found such a patron as he was 
seeking, set out from England and joined him there. 

§ II. Soon after the arrival of Comenius in Sweden, 
the great Oxenstiern sent for him to Stockholm, and with 
John Skyte, the Chancellor of Upsal University, examined 
him and his system. "These two," as Comenius says, 
" exercised me in colloquy for four days, and chiefly 
the most illustrious Oxenstiern, that eagle of the North 
(^Aquila Aquilonius). He inquired into the foundations of 
both my schemes, the Didactic and the Pansophic, so 
searchingly, that it was unlike anything that had been done 
before by any of my learned critics. In the first two days 
he examined the Didactics, and finally said : * From an 
early age I perceived that our Method of Studies generally 
in use is a harsh and crude one {viole?itum quiddam), but 
where the thing stuck I could not find out. At length, 
having been sent by my King of glorious memory [?>., by 
Gustavus Adolphus], as ambassador into Germany, I con- 
versed on the subject with various learned men. And 
when I had heard that Wolfgang Ratichius was toiling at 
an amended Method I had no rest of mind till I had him 
before me, but instead of talking on the subject, he put 



COMENIUS. 129 



Oxenstiern criticises. 



into my hands a big quarto volume. I swallowed this 
trouble, and having turned over the whole book, I saw that 
he had detected well enough the maladies of our schools 
but the remedies he proposed did not seem to me sufficient. 
Yours, Mr. Comenius, rest on firmer foundations. Go on 
with the work.' I answered that I had done all I could in 
those matters, and must now go on to others. ' I know,' 
said he, ' that you are toiling at greater affairs, for I have 
read your Prodromiis Pansophice. That we will discuss 
to-morrow, I must now to public business.' Next day he 
began on my Pansophic attempts, and examined them with 
still greater severity. ' Are you a man,' he asked, ' who 
can bear contradiction?' 'I can,' said I, 'and for that 
reason my Prodromiis or preliminary sketch was sent out 
first (not indeed that I sent it out myself, this was done by 
friends), that it might meet with criticism. And if we seek 
the criticism of all and sundry, how much more from men 
of mature wisdom and heroic reason?' He began accor- 
dingly to discourse against the hope of a better state of 
things arising from a rightly instituted study of Pansophia ; 
first, objecting political reasons, then what was said in 
Scripture about ' the last times.' All which objections I 
so answered that he ended with these words: 'Into no 
one's mind do I think such things have come before. 
Str.nd upon these grounds of yours ; so shall we some time 
come to agreement, or there will be no way left. My advice, 
however,' added he, 'is that you first do something for llie 
schools, and bring the study of the Latin tongue to a greater 
facility; thus you will prepare the way for those greater 
matters.' " As Skyte and afterwards De Geer gave the same 
advice, Comenius felt himself constrained to follow it; so he 
agreed to settle at Elbing, in Prussia, and there write a work 



130 COMENIUS. 



Comenius at Elbing. 



on teaching, in which the principles of the Didactica Alagna 
should be worked out with especial reference to teaching 
languages. Notwithstanding the remonstrances cf his 
English friends, to which Comenius would gladly have 
listened, he was kept by Oxenstiern and De Geer strictly to 
his agreement, and thus, much against his will, he was held 
fast for eight years in what he calls the " miry entanglements 
of logomachy." 

§ 12. Elbing, where, after a journey to Leszna to fetch 
his family (for he had married again), Comenius now 
settled, is in West Prussia, thirty-six miles south-east of 
Dantzic. From 1577 to 1660 an English trading company 
was settled here, with which the family of Hartlib was 
connected. This perhaps was one reason why Comenius 
chose this town for his residence. But although he had 
a grant of ;^3oo a year from Parliament, Hartlib, instead 
of assisting with money, seems at this time to have himself 
needed assistance, for in October, 1642, Comenius writes 
to De Geer that he fears Fundanius and Hartlib are suffer- 
ing from want, and that he intends for them ;^2oo promised 
by the London booksellers ; he suggests that De Geer shall 
give them ;^3o each meanwhile. (Benham, p. 63.) 

§ 13. The relation between Comenius and his patron 
naturally proved a difficult one. The Dutchman thought 
that as he supported Comenius, and contributed something 
more for the assistants, he might expect of Comenius that 
he would devote all his time to the scholastic treatise he 
had undertaken. Comenius, however, was a man of 
immense energy and of widely extended sympathies and 
connections. He was a " Bishop " of the religious body to 
which he belonged, and in this capacity he engaged in ccn- 
troversy, and attended some religious conferences. Then 



COMENIUS. 131. 



At Leszna again. 



again, pupils were pressed upon him, and as money to pay 
five writers whom he kept at work was ahvays running short, 
he did not decline them. De Geer complained of this, and 
s'vipplies were not furnished with wonted regularity. In 
1647 Comenius writes to Hartlib that he is almost over- 
whelmed with cares, and sick to death of writing begging- 
letters. Yet in this year he found means to publish a book 
On the Causes of this {i.e., the Thirty Years) War, in 
which the Roman Catholics are attacked with great bitter- 
ness — a bitterness for which the position of the writer affords 
too good an excuse. 

§ 14. The year 1648 brought with it the downfall of all 
Comenius' hopes of returning to his native land. The 
Peace of Westphalia was concluded without any provision 
being made for the restoration of the exiles. But though 
thus doomed to pass the remaining years of his hfe in 
banishment, Comenius, in this year, seemed to have found 
an escape from all his pecuniary difficulties. The Senior 
Bishop, the head of the Moravian Brethren, died, and 
Comenius was chosen to succeed him. In consequence 
of this, Comenius returned to Leszna, where due provision 
was made for him by the Brethren. Before he left Elbing, 
however, the fruit of his residence there, the Methodus 
Liiiguarum Novissima, had been submitted to a commission 
of learned Swedes, and approved of by them. The MS. 
went with him to Leszna, where it was published. 

§ 15. As head of the Moravian Church, there now de- 
volved upon Comenius the care of all the exiles, and his 
widespread reputation enabled him to get situations for 
many of them in all Protestant countries. But he was 
now so much connected with the science of education, that 
even his post at Leszna did not prevent his receiving and 



132 COMENIUS. 



Saros-Patak. Flight from Leszna. 

accepting a call to reform the schools in Transylvania. A 
model school was formed at Saros-Patak, where there wai 
a settlement of the banished Brethren, and in this school 
Comenius laboured from 1650 till 1654. At this time he 
wrote his most celebrated book, which is indeed only an 
abridgment of his Janua with the important addition of 
pictures, and sent it to Niirnberg, where it appeared three 
years later (1657). This was the famous Orbis Pictus. 

§ 16. Full of trouble as Comenius' life had hitherto 
been, its greatest calamity was still before him. After he 
was again settled at Leszna, Poland was invaded by the 
Swedes, on which occasion the sympathies of the Brethren 
were with their fellow-Protestants, and Comenius was 
imprudent enough to write a congratulatory address to 
the Swedish King. A peace followed, by the terms of 
which, several towns, and Leszna among them, were made 
over to Sweden ; but when the King withdrew, the Poles 
took up arms again, and Leszna, the headquarters of the 
Protestants, the town in which the chief of the Moravian 
Brethren had written his address welcoming the enemy, 
was taken and plundered. 

Comenius and his family escaped, but his house was 
marked for special violence, and notliing was preserved. 
His sole remaining possessions were the clothes in which 
he and his family travelled. All his books and manuscripts 
were burnt, among them his valued work on Pansophia, 
and a Latin-Bohemian and Bohemian-Latin Dictionary, 
giving words, phrases, idioms, adages, and aphorisms — a 
book on which he had been labouring for forty years. 
"This loss," he writes, "I shall cease to lament only when 
I cease to breathe." 

§ 17. After wandering for some time about Germany, 



COMENIUS. 133 

Last years at Amsterdam. 

and being prostrated by fever at Hamburg, he at length 
came to Amsterdam, where Lawrence De Geer, the son 
of his deceased patron, gave him an asylum. Here were 
spent the remaining years of his life in ease and dignity. 
Compassion for liis misfortunes was united with veneration 
for his learning and piety. He earned a sufficient income 
by giving instruction in the families of the wealthy ; and by 
the liberality of De Geer he was enabled to publish a 
fine folio edition of all his writings on Education (1657). 
His political works, however, were to the last a source of 
trouble to him. His hostility to the Pope and the House 
of Hapsburg made him the dupe of certain " prophets " 
whose soothsayings he published as Lux in Tenebris. 
One of these prophets, who had announced that the Turk 
was to take Vienna,' was executed at Pressburg, and the 
Ltix in Tenebris at the same time burnt by the hangman. 
Before the news of this disgrace reached Amsterdam, 
Comenius was no more. He died in the year 1671, at the 
advanced age of eighty, and with him terminated the office 
of Chief Bishop among the Moravian Brethren. 

§ 18. His long life had been full of trouble, and he saw 
little of the improvements he so earnestly desired and 
laboured after, but he continued the struggle hopefully to 
the end. In his seventy-seventh year he wrote these 
memorable words: "I thank God that I have all my life 
been a man of aspirations. . . . For the longing after good, 
however it spring up in the heart, is always a rill flowing 
from the Fountain of all good — from God."* Labouring in 



* Unum Necessarium, quoted by Raumer. 

Compare George Eliot : " By desiring what is perfectly good, even 
when we don't quite know what it is, and cannot do what we would, we 



134 COMENIUS. 



Comenius sought true foundation. 

this spirit he did not toil in vain, and the historians of 
education have agreed in ranking him among the most 
influential as well as the most noble-minded of the Ro- 
formers. 



§ 19. Before Comenius, no one had brought the mind 
of a philosopher to bear practically on the subject of 
education. Montaigne and Bacon had advanced principles, 
leaving others to see to their application. A few able school- 
masters, Ascham, e.g., had investigated new methods, but 
had made success in teaching the test to which they 
appealed, rather than any abstract principle. Comenius 
was at once a philosopher who had learnt of Bacon, and 
a schoolmaster who had earned his livelihood by teaching 
the rudiments. Dissatisfied with the state of education as 
he found it, he sought for a better system by an examination 
of the laws of Nature. Whatever is thus established is 
indeed on an immovable foundation, and, as Comenius 
himself says, "not liable to any ruin." It will hardly be 
disputed, when broadly stated, that there are laws of 
Nature which must be obeyed in dealing with the mind, 
as with the body. No doubt these laws are not so easily 
established in the first case as in the second, nor can we 
find them without much " groping " and some mistakes ; 
but whoever in any way assists or even tries to assist in 
the discovery, deserves our gratitude; and greatly are 



are pari of the Divine power against evil — widening the skirts of light and 
making the struggle with darkness narrower." — Midd/emarcA, bk. iv, 
p. 30S of first edition. 



COMENIUS. 135 



Threefold life. Seeds of learning, virtue, piety. 

we indebted to him who first boldly set about the task, and 
devoted to it years of patient labour. 

§ 20 Comenius has left voluminous Latin writings. 
Proft'ssor Laurie gives us the titles of the books connected with 
education, and they are in number forty-two : so there must 
be much repetition and indeed retractation ; for Comenius 
was always learning, and one of his last books was Ventilabnim 
Sapienii(B, sive sapienter sua rdractandi Ars — i.e.^ " Wisdom's 
Winnovving-machine, or the Art of wisely withdrawing one's 
own assertions." We owe much to Professor Laurie, who 
has served as a ventilabrum and left us a succinct and clear 
account of the Reformer's teaching. I have read little of 
the writings of Comenius except the German translation of 
the " Great Didactic," from which the following is taken. 

§ 21. We rive, says Comenius, a threefold life — a 
vegetative, an animal, and an intellectual or spiritual. Of 
these, the first is perfect in the womb, the last in heaven. 
He is happy who comes with healthy body into the world, 
much more he who goes with healthy spirit out of it. 
According to the heavenly idea, man should (i) know all 
things; (2) should be master of all things, and of himself; 
(3) should refer everything to God. So that within us 
Nature has implanted the seeds of (i) learning, (2) virtue, 
and (3) piety. To bring these seeds to maturity is the 
object of education. All men require education, and God 
has made children unfit for other employments that they 
may have leisure to learn. 

§ 22. But schools have failed, and instead of keeping 
to the true object of education, and teaching the foundations, 
relations, and intentions of all the most important things, 
they have neglected even the mother tongue, and confined 
the teaching to Latin; and yet that has been so badly 



136 COMENIUS. 

Omnia sponte fluant. Analogies. 

taught, and so much time has been wasted over grammar 
rules and dictionaries, that from ten to twenty years are 
spent in acquiring as much knowledge of Latin as is 
speedily acquired of any modern tongue. 

§ 23. The cause of this want of success is that the 
s)stem does not follow Nature. Everything natural goes 
smoothly and easily. There must therefore be no pressure. 
Learning should come to children as swimming to fish, 
flying to birds, running to animals. As Aristotle says, the 
desire of knowledge is implanted in man : and the mind 
grows as the body does — by taking proper nourishment, 
not by being stretched on the rack. 

§ 24. If we would ascertain how teaching and learning 
are to have good results, we must look to the known 
processes of Nature and Art. A man sows seed, and it 
comes up he knows not how, but in sowing it he must 
attend to the requirements of Nature. Let us then look to 
Nature to find out how knowledge takes root in young 
minds. We find that Nature waits for the fit time. Then, 
too, she has prepared the material before she gives it form. 
In our teaching we constantly run counter to these prin- 
ciples of hers. We give instruction before the young minds 
are ready to receive it. We give the form before the 
material. Words are taught before the things to which 
they refer. When a foreign tongue is to be taught, we 
cOir.i.ionly give the form, i.e., the grammatical rules, before 
we give the material, i.e., the language, to which the rules 
ajjply. We should begin with an author, or properly 
prepared translation-book, and abstract rules should never 
come before the examples. 

§ 25. Again, Nature begins each of her works with its 
inmost part. Moreover, the crude form comes first, then 



COMENIUS. 137 



Analogies of growth. 



ihe elaboration of the parts. The architect, acting on this 
principle, first makes a rough plan or model, and then by 
degrees designs the details ; last of all he attends to the 
ornamentation. In teaching, then, let the inmost part, 
i.e., the understanding of the subject, come first; then let 
the thing understood be used to exercise the memory, the 
speech, and the hands; and let every language, science, 
and art be taught first in its rudimentary outline; then 
more completely with examples and rules ; finally, with 
exceptions and anomalies. Instead of this, some teachers 
are foolish enough to require beginners to get up all the 
anomalies in Latin Grammar, and the dialects in Greek. 

§ 26. Again, as Nature does nothing per saltupi, nor 
halts when she has begun, the whole course of studies 
should be arranged in strict order, so that the earlier 
studies prepare the way for the later. Every year, every 
month, every day and hour even, should have its task 
marked out beforehand, and the plan should be rigidly 
carried out. Much loss is occasioned by absence of boys 
from school, and by changes in the instruction. Iron that 
might be wrought with one heatmg should not be allowed 
to get cold, and be heated over and over again. 

§ 27. Nature protects her work from injurious influences, 
so boys should be kept from injurious companionships and 
books. 

§ 28. In a chapter devoted to the principles of easy 
teaching, Comenius lays down, among rules similar to the 
foregoing, that children will learn if they are taught only 
what they have a desire to learn, with due regard to their 
age and the method of instruction, and especially when 
everything is first taught by means of the senses. On this 
point Comenius laid great stress, and he was the first who 



138 COMENIUS. 



Senses. Foster desire of knowledge. 

did so. Education should proceed, he said, in the follow- 
ing order: first, educate the senses, then the memory, then 
the intellect; last of all the critical faculty. This is ihe 
order of Nature. The child first perceives through the 
senses. "A"///// est in inielledu quod non prius fucrit in 
sensu. Everything in the intellect must have come through 
the senses." These perceptions are stored in the memory, 
and called up by the imagination.* By comparing one 
with another, the understanding forms general ideas, and 
at length the judgment decides between the false and the 
true. By keeping to this order, Comenius believed it 
would be possible to make learning entirely pleasant to the 
pupils, however young. Here Comenius went even further 
than the Jesuits. They wished to make learning pleasant, 
but despaired of doing this except by external influences, 
emulation and the like. Comenius did not neglect external 
means to make the road to learning agreeable. Like the 
Jesuits, he would have short school-hours, and would make 
great use of praise and blame, but he did not depend, as 
they did almost exclusively, on emulation. He would have 
the desire of learning fostered in every possible way — by 
parents, by teachers, by school buildings and apparatus, by 
the subjects themselves, by the method of teaching them, 
and lastly, by the public authorities. (i) The parents 
must praise learning and learned men, must show children 
beautiful books, &c., must treat the teachers with great 
respect. (2) The teacher must be kind and fatheily, he 
must distribute praise and reward, and must always, where 
it is possible, give the children something to look at. (3) 
The school buildings must be lights airy, and cheerful, and 

• Compare Mulcaster, supra, p. 94. 



COMENIUS. 139 



No punishments. Words and things together. 

well furnished with apparatus, as pictures, maps, models, 
collections of specimens. (4) The subjects taught must 
not be too hard for the learner's comprehension, and the 
more entertaining parts of them must be especially dwelt 
upon. (5) The method must be natural, and everything 
that is not essential to the subject or is beyond the pupil 
must be omitted. Fables and allegories should be intro- 
duced, and enigmas given for the pupils to guess. (6) 
The authorities must appoint public examinations and 
reward merit. 

§ 29. Nature helps herself in various ways, so the 
pupils should have every assistance given them. It should 
especially be made clear what the pupils are to learn, and 
how they should learn it. 

§ 30. The pupils should be punished for offences 
against morals only. If they do not learn, the fault is with 
the teacher. 

§ 31. One of Comenius's most distinctive principles 
was that there should no longer be '•'■ infelix divortium 
rerum et verborum, the wretched divorce of words from 
things" (ihe phrase, I think, is Campanella's), but that 
knowledge of things and words should go together. This, 
together with his desire of submitting everything to the 
pupil's senses, would have introduced a great change into 
the course of instruction, which was then, as it has for the 
most part continued, purely literary. We should learn, says 
romenius, as much as possible, not from books, but from 
the great book of Nature, from heaven and earth, from oaks 
and beeches. 

§ 32. When languages are to be learnt, he would have 
them taught separately. Till the pupil is from eight to ten 
years old, he should be instructed only in the mother- 



I40 COMENIUS. 



Languages. System of schools. 



tongue, and about things. Then other languages can be 
acquired in about a year each ; Latin (which is to be 
stidied more thoroughly) in about two years. Eveiy 
language must be learnt by use rather than by rules, i.e., it 
must be learnt by hearing, reading and re-reading, tran- 
scribing, attempting imitations in writing and orally, and 
by using the language in conversation. Rules assist and 
confirm practice, but they must come after, not before it. 
The first exercises in a language should take for their 
subject something of which the sense is already known, so 
that the mind may be fixed on the words and their connec- 
tions.* The Catechism and Bible History may be used for 
this purpose. 

§ 33- Considering the classical authors not suited to 
boys' understanding, and not fit for the education of 
Christians, Comenius proposed writing a set of Latin 
manuals for the different stages between childhood and 
manhood : these were to be called " Vestibulum," " Janua," 
" Palatium"or "Atrium," "Thesaurus." The "Vestibulum," 
"Janua," and "Atrium " were really carried out. 

§ 34. In Comenius's scheme there were to be four 
kinds of schools for a perfect educational course:— ist, 
the mother's breast for infancy ; 2nd, the public vernacular 
school for children, to which all should be sent from six 
years old till twelve ; 3rd, the Latin school or Gymnasium j 
4th, residence at a University and travelling, to complete 
the course. The public schools were to be for all classes 
alike, and for girlsf as well as boys. 

* Comenius here follows Ratke, who, as I have mentioned above 
(p. 116), required beginners to study the translation before the original. 

t Professor Masson {Life of Milton, vol. iii, p. 205, note) gives us the 
following from chap, ix (cols. 42-44), of the Didactica Magna: — 



COMENIUS. 141 



Mother-tongue School. Girls. 



§ 35. Most boys and girls in every community would 
stop at the vernacular school ; and as this school is a very 
distinctive feature in Oomenius's plan, it may be worth while 
to give his programme of studies. In this school the children 
should learn — ist, to read and write the mother-tongue 
well, both with writing and printing letters ; 2nd, to com- 
pose grammatically; 3rd, to cipher; 4th, to measure and 
weigh ; 5th, to sing, at first popular airs, then from music ; 
6th, to say by heart, sacred psalms and hymns ; 7th, Cate- 
chism, Bible History, and texts ; 8th, moral rules, with 
examples ; 9th, economics and politics, as far as they could 
be understood; loth, general history of the world; nth, 



"Nor, to say something particularly on this subject, can any 
sulTicient reason be given why the weaker sex [iegiiior sexiis, literally 
the later or following sex, is his phrase, borrowed from Apuleius, and, 
though the phrase is usually translated the inferior sex, it seems to have 
been chosen by Comenius to avoid that implication] should be wholly 
shut out from liberal studies whether in the native tongue or in Latin. 
For equally are they God's image ; equally are they partakers of grace, 
and of the Kingdom to come ; equally are they furnished with minds 
agile and capable of wisdom, yea, often beyond our sex ; equally to 
them is there a possibility of attaining high distinction, inasmuch as they 
have often been employed by God Himself (or the government of peoples, 
the bestowing of wholesome counsels on Kings and Princes, the science 
of medicine and other things useful to the human race, nay even the 
pr.iphetical office, and the rattling reprimand of Priests and Bishops 
[eliam ad propheticum munus, et increpandos Sacerdotes Episcoposque, 
are the words ; and as the treatise was prepared for the press in 1638 
one detects a reference, by the Moravian Brother in Poland to the 
recent fame of Jenny Geddes, of Scotland]. Why then should we 
a;imit them to the alphabet, but afterwards debar them from books? 
Do we fear their rashness? The more we occupy their thoughts, the 
less room will there be in them for rashness, which springs generally 
from vacuity of mind." 



142 COMENIUS. 



School teaching. Mother's teaching. 

figure of the earth and motion of stars, &c., physics and 
geography, especially of native land; 12th, general know- 
ledge of arts and handicrafts. 

§ 36. Each school was to be divided into six classes, 
corresponding to the six years the pupil should spend in it. 
The hours of work were to be, in school, two hours in the 
morning and two in the afternoon, with nearly the same 
amount of private study. In the morning the mind and 
memory were to be exercised, in the afternoon the hands 
and voice. Each class was to have its proper lesson-book 
written expressly for it, so as to contain everything that 
class had to learn. When a lesson was to be got by heart 
from the book, the teacher was first to read it to the class, 
explain it, and re-read it ; the boys then to read it aloud by 
turns till one of them offered to repeat it without book; 
the others were to do the same as soon as they were able, 
till all had repeated it. This lesson was then to be worked 
over again as a writing lesson, &c. In the higher forms of 
the vernacular school a modern language was to be taught 
and duly practised. 

§ 37. Here we see a regular school course projected 
which differed essentially from the only complete school 
course still earlier, that of the Jesuits. In education 
Comenius was immeasurably in advance of Loyola and 
Aquaviva. Like the great thinkers, Pestalozzi and Froebel, 
who most resemble him, he thought of the development of 
the child from its birth ; and in a singularly wise little book, 
called Schola materni greniii, or " School of the Mother's 
Breast," he has given advice for bringing up children to the 
age of six.* 

* Translated by Daniel Benham as The School of Infancy, London, 
1858. 



COMENIUS. 143 



Comenius and the Kindergarten. 

§ 38. Very interesting are the hints here given, in 
which we get the first approaches to Kindergarten training. 
Comenius saw that, much as their elders might do to 
develop children's powers of thought and expression, " yet 
children of the same age and the same manners and habits 
arc of greater service still. When they talk or play 
together, they sharpen each other more effectually ; for the 
one does not surpass the other in depth of invention, and 
there is among them no assumption of superiority of the 
one over the other, only love, candour, free questionings 
and answers" {School of Lifancy, vi, 12, p. 38).* The 
constant activity of children must be provided for. " It is 
better to play than to be idle, for during play the mind is 
intent on some object which often sharpens the abilities. 
In this way children may be early exercised to an active 
life without any difficulty, since Nature herself stirs them 
up to be doing something" {lb. ix, 15, p. 55). "In the 
second, third, fourth years, &c., let their spirits be stirred up 
by means of agreeable play with them or their playing 
among themselves. . . . Nay, if some little occupation 
can be conveniently provided for the child's eyes, ears, or 
other senses, these will contribute to its vigour of mind and 
body" {lb. vi, 21, p. 31). 

§ 39. We have the usual cautions against forcing. 

• Here Comenius seems to be thinking of the intercourse of children 
when no older companion is present ; Froebel made more of the very 
different intercourse when their thoughts and actions are led by some 
one who hns studied how to lead them. Children constantly want help 
from their elders even in amusing themselves. On the other hand, it is 
only the very wisest of mortals who can give help enough and no more. 
Self-dependence may sometimes be cultivated by "a little wholesome 
neglect." 



144 COMENIUS. 



Starting points of the sciences. 



" Early fruit is useful for the day, but will not keep ; whereas 
late fruit may be kept all the year. As some natural 
capacities would fly, as it were, before the sixth, the fifth, or 
even the fourth year, yet it will be beneficial rather to 
restrain than permit this ; but very much worse to enforce 
it." *' It is safer that the brain be rightly consolidated before 
it begin to sustain labours : in a little child the whole 
bregma is scarcely closed and the brain consolidated 
within the fifth or sixth year. It is sufificient, therefore, for 
this age to comprehend spontaneously, imperceptibly and 
as it were in play, so much as is employed in the domestic 
circle " {lb. chap. xi). 

§ 40. One disastrous tendency has always shown itself 
in the schoolroom — the tendency to sever all connection 
between studies in the schoolroom and life outside. The 
young pack away their knowledge as it were in water-tight 
compartments, where it may lie conveniently till the 
scholastic voyage is over and it can be again unshipped.* 
Against this tendency many great teachers have striven, 
and none more vigorously than Comenius. Like Pestalozzi 
he sought to resohe everything into its simplest elements, 
and he finds the commencements before the school age. 
In the School of Ljfancy he says (speaking of rhetoric), 
" My aim is to shew, although this is not generally attended 
to, that the roots of all sciences and arts in every instance 



• Comical and at the same time melancholy results follow. In an 
elementary school, where the children "took up" geography for the 
Inspector, I once put some questions about St. Paul at Rome. I aslcod 
in what country Rome was, but nobody seemed to have heard of such a 
place. " It's geography !" said I, and some twenty hands went up 
directly : their owners now answered quite readily, "In Italy." 



COMENIUS. 145 



Beginnings in Geography, History, &c. 

arise as early as in the tender age, and that on these 
foundations it is neither impossible nor difficult for the 
whole superstructure to be laid ; provided always that we 
act reasonably with a reasonable creature" (viij, 6, p. 46). 
This principle he applies in his chapter, "How children 
ought to be accustomed to an active life and perpetual 
employment" (chap. vij). In the fourth and fifth year their 
powers are to be drawn out in mechanical or architectural 
efforts, in drawing and writing, in music, in arithmetic, 
geometry, and dialectics. For arithmetic in the fourth, 
fifth, or sixth year, it will be sufficient if they count up to 
twenty ; and they may be taught to play at " odd and even." 
In geometry they may learn in the fourth year what are 
Hnes, what are squares, what are circles ; also the usual 
measures — foot, pint, quart, &c., and soon they should try 
to measure and weigh for themselves. Similar beginnings 
are found for other sciences such as physics, astronomy, 
geography, history, economics, and politics. " The elements 
oi geography will be during the course of the first year and 
thenceforward, when children begin to distinguish between 
their cradles and their motfier's bosom" (vj, 6, p. 34). 
As this geographical knowledge extends, they discover " what 
a field is, what a mountain, forest, meadow, river" (iv, 9, 
p. 17). "The beginning of history will be, to be able to 
remember what was done yesterday, what recently, what a 
year ago."* (//'.) 

§ 41. In this book Comenius is careful to provide 

* " A talent for History may be said to be born with us, as our chief 
irheritance. In a certain sense all men are historians. Is not every 
memory written quite full of annals . . . ? Our very speech is 
curiously historical. Most men, you may observe, speak only to 
narrate." (Carlyle on History, Miscellanies.) 
L 



146 COMENIUS. 



Drawing. Education for all. 



children with occupation for ^^mii'datid /ia?id" (iv, 10, p. 18). 
Di awing is to be practised by all. " It matters not," says 
Comenius, " whether the objects be correctly drawn cr 
oihcxw'xnQ pjvvided that they afford delight to the mind."* 

§ 42. We see then that this restless thinker considered 
the entire course of a child's bringihg-up from the cradle to 
maturity ; and we cannot doubt that Raumer is right m 
saying, " The influence of Comenius on subsequent thinkers 
and workers in education, especially on the ]\Ielhodizers, is 
incalculable." {Gesch. d. F., ij, ''Comenius," § 10.) 

Before we think of his methods and school books, let us 
inquire what he did for education that has proved to be on 
a solid foundation and "not liable to any ruin." 

§ 43. He was the first to reach a standpoint which was 
and perhaps always will be above the heads of " the practical 
men," and demand education for all. "We design for all 
who have been born human beings, general instruction to 
fit them for everything human. They must, therefore, as 
far as possible be taught together, so that they may mutually 
draw each other out, enliven and stimulate. Of the 
' mother-tongue school ' the end and aim will be, that all 
the youth of both sexes between the sixth and the twelfth 
or thirteenth years be taught those things v.'hich will be 
useful to them all their life long."f 

• South Kens'ngton, which controls the drawing of millions of chil- 
dren, says precisely the opposite, and prescribes a kind of tl rawing, 
which, though it may give manual skill to adults, does not "affoid 
delight " to the mind of children. 

t "Generalem nos intendimus institutionem omnium qui homines nati 
sunt, ad omnia humana. . . Vernacular (scholar) scopus metaque eiit, 
ut omnis juventus utriusque sexus, intra annum sextum et duodecimum" 
Beu decimum terlium, ea addoceatur quorum usus per tot.am vitam s« 



COMENIUS. 147 



Scientific and Religious Agreement. 

In these days we often hear controversies between the 
tren of science and the ministers of religion. It is as far 
beyond my intention as it is beyond my abilities to discuss 
how far the antithesis between religion and science is a true 
one; t)tit our subject sometimes forces us to observe that 
religion and science often bring thinkers by diiferent paths 
to the same result ; e.g., they both refuse to recognise class 
distinctioiis and make us see an essential unity underlying 
superficial variations. In Comenius we have an earnest 
Christian minister who was also an enthusiast for science. 
Moreover he was without social and virtually without 
national restrictions, and he was thus in a good position for 
expressing freely and without bias what both his science 
and his religion taught him. " Not only are the children of 
the rich and noble to be drawn to the school, but all alike, 
gentle and simple, rich and poor, boys and girls, in great 
towns and small, down to the country villages. And for this 
reason. Every one who is born a human being is born with 
this intent — chat he should be a human being, that is, a 
reasonable creature ruling over the other creatures and bear- 
ing the likeness of his Maker." {Didadica M. ix, § i.) 
This sounds to me nobler than the utterances of Rousseau 
and the French Revolutionii^ts, not to mention Locke who 
fell back on considering merely '• the gentleman's calling." 
Even Bishop Butler a century after Comenius hardly takes 
so firm a ground, though he lays it down that " children 



extendat." I quote this Latin from the excellent article Comenius (by 
several writers) in Buisson's Dictionnaire. It is a great thing to get 
an author's exact words. Unfortunately the wtitei in the Dictionnaire 
follows custom and does not give the means of verifying the quotation. 
Comenius in Latin I have never seen except in the British Museum. 



148 COMENIUS. 



Bp. Butler on Educating the Poor. 

have as much right to some proper education as to have 
their hves preserved."* 

§ 44. The first man who demanded training for every 
human being because he or she was a human being must 
always be thought of with respect and gratitude by all who 
care either for science or religion. It has taken us 250 
years to reach the standpoint of Comenius ; but we have 
reached it, or almost reached it at last, and when we have 
once got hold of the idea we are not likely to lose it again. 
The only question .is whether we shall not go on and in the 
end agree with Comenius that the primary school shall be 
for rich and poor alike. At present the practical men, in 
England especially, have things all their own way ; but their 
horizon is and must be very limited. They have already had 

* In Sermon on Charity Schools, A.D. 1745. The Bishop points 
out that " training up chihhen is a veiy diilerent thing from merely 
teaching them some truths necessary to be known or believed." He 
oes into the historical aspect of the subject. As since the days of 
E izabeth there has been legal provision for the maintenance of the 
poor, there has been "need also of some particular legal provision in 
behalf of poor children for their education ; this not being included in 
what we call maintenance." "But," says the Bishop, ''it might be 
necessary that a burden so entirely new as that of a poor-tax was at the 
time I am speaking of, should be as light as possible. Thus the legal 
provision for the poor was first settled without any particular considera- 
tion of that additional want in the case of children ; as it still remains 
with scarce any alteration in this respect." And remained for nearly a 
century longer. Great changes naturally followed and will follow from 
the extension of the franchise; and another century will probably see 
us with a Folkschool worthy of its importance. By that time we shall 
no longer be open to the sarcasm of "the foreign friend:" "It is 
highly instructive to Nisit English elementary schools, for there you 
fmd everything that should be avoided." (M. Braun quoted by Mr. A. 
Sonnenschein. The id Code was in force.) 



COMENIUS. 149 



Comenius and Bacon. 



to adjust themselves to many things which their predecessors 
declared to be " quite impracticable — indeed impossible." 
May not their successors in like manner get accustomed to 
other '' impossible " things, this scheme of Comenius among 
them ? 

§ 45. The champions of realism have always recognised 
Comenius as one of their earliest leaders. Bacon had just 
given voice to the scientific spirit which had at length re- 
belled against the literary spirit dominant at the Renascence, 
and had begun to turn from all that had been thought and 
said about Nature, straight to Nature herself. Comenius 
was the professed disciple of " the noble Verulam, who," 
said he, "has given us the true key of Nature." Furnished 
with this key, Comenius would unlock the door of the 
treasure-house for himself. " It grieved me," he says, " that 
I saw most noble Verulam present us indeed with a true 
key of Nature, but not to open the secrets of Nature, only 
shewing us by a few examples how they were to be opened, 
and leave [i.e., leaving] the rest to depend on observations 
and inductions continued for several ages." Comenms 
thought that by the light of the senses, of reason, and of the 
Bible, he might advance faster. "For what? Are not we 
as well as the old philosophers placed in Nature's garden? 
Why then do we not cast about our eyes, nostrils, and ears 
as well as they ? Why should we learn the works of Nature 
of any other master rather than of these our senses? Why 
do we not, I say, turn over the living book of the world in- 
stead of dead papers? In it we may contemplate more 
things and with greater delight and profit than any one 
can tell us. If we have anywhere need of an interpreter, 
the Maker of Nature is the best interpreter Himself." (Pre- 
face to Naturall Fhilosophie reformed. Engl ish trans., 1 65 1 .) 



1 50 COMENIUS. 



" Everything Through the Senses." 

§ 46. Several things are involved in this so-called 
"realism." First, Comenius would fix the mind of learners 
on material objects. Secondly, he would have them acqu'ie 
their notions of these for themselves through the senses. 
From these two principles he drew the corollary that the 
vast accumulation of traditional learning and literature must 
bo thrown overboard. 

§ 47. The demand for the study of things has been 
best formulated by one of the greatest masters of words, by 
Milton. " Because our understanding cannot in the body 
found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so cleaily to 
the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly 
conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same 
method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching." 
(To Hartlib.) Its material surroundings then are to be the 
subjects on which the mind of the child must be fixed. 
This being settled, Comenius demands that the child's 
knowledge shall not be verbal but real realism, knowledge 
derived at first hand through the senses.* 

§ 48. On this subject Comenius may speak for himself : 
" The ground of this business is, that sensual objects [we 
now say sensible : why not sensuous ?] be rightly presented 
to the senses, for fear they may not be received. I say, and 
say it again aloud, that this last is the foundation of all the 
rest : because we can neither act nor speak wisely, unless 

* "Adhuc sub judice lis est." I find the editor of an American 
educational paper brandishing in the face of an opponent as a quotation 
from Professor N. A. Calkins' " Ear and Voice Training " : '* The 
senses are the only powers by which children can gain the elements of 
knowledge ; and until these have been trained to act, no definite know- 
ledge can be acquired." BSt Calkins says, "act, under direction of 
the mind." 



COMENIUS. KI 



Error of Neglecting the Senses. 



we first rightly understand all the things which are to be 
done and whereof we have to speak. Now there is nothing 
in the understanding which was not before in the sense, 
And therefore to exercise the senses well about the right 
perceiving the differences of things will be to lay the grounds 
for all wisdom and all wise discourse and all discreet actions 
in one's course of life. Which, because it is commonly 
neglected in Schools, and the things that are to be learned 
are offered to scholars without their being understood or 
being rightly presented to the senses, it cometh to pass that 
the work of teaching and learning goeth heavily onward and 
affordeth little benefit." (Preface to Orbis Fktus, Hoole's 
trans. A.D. 1658.) 

§ 49. Without going into any metaphysical discussion, 
we must all agree that a vast amount of impressions come 
to children through the senses, and that it is by the exercise 
of the senses that they learn most readily. As Comenius 
says : " The senses (being the main guides of childhood, 
because therein the mind doth not as yet raise up it self to an 
abstracted contemplation of things) evermore seek their 
own objects; and if these be away, they grow dull, and 
wry themselves hither and thither out of a weariness of 
themselves : but when their objects are present, they grow 
merry, wax lively, and willingly suffer themselves to be 
fastened upon them till the thing be sufficiently discerned." 
(P. to Orbis.) This truth lay at the root of most of the 
methods of Pestalozzi; and though it has had little effect 
on teaching in England (where for the word anschanlich 
there is no equivalent), everything that goes on in a German 
Folkschool has reference to it. 

§ 50. For children then Comenius gave good counsel 
when he would have their senses exercised on the world 



152 COMENIUS. 



Insufficiency of the Senses. 



about them. But after all, whatever may be thought of the 
proposition that all knowledge comes through the senses, 
we must not ignore what is bequeathed to us, both in science 
and in literature. Comenius says : " And now I beseech 
you let this be our business that the schools may cease to 
persuade and begin to demo?istrate ; cease to dispute and 
begin to look ; cease lastly to believe and begin to know. 
For that Aristotellical maxim '• Discentein oportet credere, A 
learner must believe,' is as tyrannical as it is dangerous ; so 
also is that same Pythagorean '■Ipse dixit, The Master has 
said it.' Let no man be compelled to swear to his Master's 
words, but let the things themselves constrain the intellect." 
(P. to Nat. riiil. R.) But the things themselves will not 
take us far. Even in Natural Science we need teachers, for 
Science is not reached through the senses but through the 
intellectual grasp of knowledge which has been accumulating 
for centuries. If the education of times past has neglected 
the senses, we must not demand that the education of the 
future should care for the senses only. There is as yet 
little danger of our thinking too much of physical education ; 
but we sometimes hear reformers talking as if the true ideal 
were sketched in " Locksley Hall :" 

" Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run, 
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun, 
Wliistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks ; 
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books." 

There seems, however, still some reason for counting " the 
gray barbarian lower than the Christian child." And the 
reason is that we are " the heirs of all the ages." Our 
education must enable every child to enter in some measure 
on his inheritance ; and not a few of our most precious heir 



COMENIUS. 153 



C, undervalued the Past. 



looms will be found not only in scientific discoveries but 
also in those great works of literature which the votaries of 
science are apt to despise as "miserable books." This 
tiulh was not duly appreciated byComenias. As Professor 
Laurie well says, " he accepted only in a half-hearted way 
the products of the genius of past ages." (Laurie's C, p. 
22.) In his day there was a violent reaction from the 
Renascence passion for literature, and Comenius would 
entirely banish from education the only literatures which 
were then important, the "heathen" literatures of Greece 
and Rome. " Our most learned men," says he, " even 
among the theologians take from Christ only the mask : the 
blood and life they draw from Aristotle and a crowd of 
other heathens." (See Paulsen's Gesch., pp. 312, ff.) So 
for Cicero and Virgil he would substitute, and his con- 
temporaries at first . seemed willing to accept, the Janua 
Lingiiariim. But though there may be much more " real " 
knowledge in the Janua, the classics have survived it.* 

* "^^^lat do you learn from 'Paradise Lost'? Nothing at all. 
^^^lat do you learn from a cookery book ? Something new, something 
that you did not know before, in eveiy paragraph. But would you 
therefore put the wretched cookery book on a higher level of estima- 
tion than the divine poem ? What you owe to Milton is not any 
kiioioledge, of which a million separate items are but a million of 
advancing steps on the same earthly level ; what you owe is power, 
that is, exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of s}'mpathy 
with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate influx is a step 
upward — a step ascending as upon a Jacob's ladder from earth to 
\nysterious altitudes above the earth. All the steps of knowledge from 
first to last carry you further on the same plane, but could never raise 
you one foot above your ancient level of earth ; whereas the very yfrj/ 
step in power is a flight, is an ascending into another element where 
earth is forgotten." I have met with this as a quotation from De 
Quincey. 



154 COMENIUS. 



Literature and Science. 



In these days there is a passion for the study of things 
which in its intensity resembles the Renascence passion for 
literature. There is a craving for knowledge, and we know 
only the truths we can verify ; so this craving must be 
satisfied, not by words, but things. And yet that domain 
which the physicists contemptuously describe as the study 
of words must not be lost sight of, indeed cannot be, either 
by young or old. As Matthew Arnold has said, "those 
who are for giving to natural knowledge the chief place in 
the education of the majority of mankind leave one im- 
portant thing out of their account — the constitution of 
human nature." 

" We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love, 
And e'en as these are well and wisely fixed, 
In dignity of being we ascend." 

So says Wordsworth, and if this assertion cannot be 
verified, no more can it be disproved ; that the words have 
become almost proverbial shows that it commends itself to 
the general consciousness. Whatever knowledge we may 
acquire, it will have httle effect on our lives unless, we can 
"relate it" (again to use Matthew Arnold's words), "to oui 
sense of conduct and our sense of beauty." {Discourses in 
America. " literature and Science.") So long as we retain 
our sense for these, "the humanities" are safe. Like Milton 
we may have no inclination to study " modern Januas," but we 
Lhall not cease to value many of the vi^orks which the Janua 
of Comenius was supposed to have supplanted.* 

• When I visited (some years ago) the "Ecole Modele" at Brussels 
I was told that books were used for nothing except for learning to read, 
Comenius was saved from this consequence of his realism by his fervent 
Christianity. lie valued the study of the Bible as highly as the Re- 



COMENIUS. 155 



C.'s use of Analogies. 



§ 51. "Analogies are good for illustration, not for 
proof." If Comenius had accepted this caution, he would 
have escaped much useless labour, and might have had a 
better foundation for his rules than fanciful applications of 

nascence scholars valued the study of the classics, though for a veiy 
different leason. He cared for the Bible not as literature, but as the 
highest authority on the problems of existence. Those who, like 
Matthew Arnold, may attribute to it far less authority may still treasure 
it as literature, while those who despise literature and recognise no 
authority above things would limit us to the curriculum of the " Ecole 
Modele " and care for natural science only. 

In this country we are fortunately able to advocate some reforms 
which were suggested by the realism of Comenius without incurring any 
suspicion of rejecting his Christianity. It is singular to see how the 
highest authorities of to-day — men conversant with the subject on the 
side of practice as well as theory — hold precisely the language which 
practical men have been wont to laugh at as "theoretical nonsense" 
ever since the days of Comenius. A striking instance will be found in 
a lecture by the Principal of the Battersea Training College (Rev. Canon 
Daniel) as reported in Educational Times, July, 1889. Compare what 
Comenius said {stipra p. 151) with the following : "Children are not 
sufficiently required to use their senses. They are allowed to observe 
by deputy. They look at Nature through the spectacles of Books, and 
through the eyes of the teacher, but do not observe for themselves. It 
might be expected that in object lessons and science lessons, which are 
specially intended to cultivate the observing faculty, this fault would be 
avoided, but I do not find that such is the case. I often hear lessons on 
objects that are not object lessons at all. The object is not allowed to 
speak for itself, eloquent though it is, and capable though it is of adapt- 
hig its te;iching to the youngest child who interrogates it. The teacher 
buries it under a heap of words and second-hand statements, thereby 
converting the object lesson into a verbal lesson and throwing away 
golden opport inities of forming the scientific habit of mind. Now 
mental science teaches us that our knowledge of the sensible qualities of 
the material world can come to us only through our senses, and through 
thft right senses If we had no senses we should know nothing about 



156 COMENIUS. 



Thought-studies and Label-studies. 

what he observed in the external world. "Comenius" as 
August Vogel has said, "is unquestionably right in wishing 
to draw his principles of education from Nature ; but instead 
of examining the proper constitution and nature of man, and 

the material world at all ; if we had a sense less we should be cut off 
from a whole class of facts ; if we had as many senses as are ascribed to 
the inhabitants of Sirius in Voltaire's novel, our knowledge would be 
proportionately greater than it is now. Words cannot compensate for 
sensations. The eloquence of a Cicero would not explain to a deaf man 
what music is, or to a blind man what scarlet is. Yet I have frequently 
seen teachers wholly disrep^ard these obvious truths. They have taught 
as though their pupils had eyes that saw not, and ears that heard not, 
and noses that smelled not, and palates that tasted not, and skins that felt 
not, and muscles that would not work. They have insisted on taking 
the words out of Nature's mouth and speaking for her. They have 
thought it derogatory to play a subordinate part to the object itself." 

This subject has been well treated by Mr. Thos. M. Balliet in a paper 
on shortening the curriculum {JVew Yo)-k School Journal, loth Nov., 
1888). "Studies," says he, "are of two kinds (i) studies which supply the 
mind with thoughts of images, and (2) those which give us 'labels,' i.e. 
the means of indicating and so communicating thought. Under the last 
head come the study of language, writing (including spelling), notation, 
&c." Mr. Balliet proposes, as Comenius did, that the symbol subjects shall 
not be taken separately, but in connexion with the thought subjects. 
Especially in the mother-tongue, we should study language for thought, 
not thought for the sake of language. 

But after all though we may and should bring the young in connexion 
with the objects of thought and not with words merely, we must not 
forget that the scholastic aspect of things will differ from the practica'. 
When brought into the schoolroom the thing must be divested of details 
and surroundings, and used to give a conception of one of a class. The 
fir tree of the schoolboy cannot be the fir tree of the wood-cutter. The 
" boiler " becomes a cylinder subject to internal or external pressure. 
It is not the thing that the engine-driver knows will bum and corrode, 
get foul in its tubes and loose in its joints, and be liable to burst. (See 
Mr. C. H. Benton on "Practical and Theoretical Training " in Spectator^ 



COMENIUS. 157 



Unity of Knowledges. 



taking that as the basis of his theory, he watches the life of 
birds, the growth of trees, or the quiet influence of the sun, 
and thus substitutes for the nature of man nature ivitJioiit 
man {die objective Naiur). And yet by Nature he under- 
stands that first and primordial state to which as to our 
original [idea] we should be restored, and by the voice of 
Nature he understands the universal Providence of God or 
the ceaseless influence of the Divine Goodness working all 
in all, that is, leading every creature to the state ordained 
for it. The vegetative and animal life in Nature is according 
to Comenius himself not life at all in its highest sense, but 
me only true life is the intellectual or spiritual life of Man. 
No doubt in the two lower kinds of life certain analogies 
may be found for the higher; but nothing can be less 
worthy of reliance and less scientific than a method which 
draws its principles for the higher life from what has been 
observed in the lower." (A. Vogel's Gesch. d. Pddagogik 
ah Wisse7jschaft, p. 94.) 

§52. This seems to me judicious criticism; but what- 
ever mistakes he may have made Comenius, like Froebel 
long after him, strove after a higher unity which should 
embrace knowledge of every kind. The connexion of 
knowledges (so constantly overlooked in the schoolroom) 
was always in his thoughts. " We see that the branches of a 
tree cannot live unless they all alike suck their juices from 
a common trunk with common roots. And can we hope 
that the branches of Wisdom can be torn asunder with safety 
to their life, that is to truth? Can one be a Natural Philosopher 



ioth Nov., 18SS). The school knowledge of things no less than of 
words may easily be over-valued. It should be given not for itself but 
10 excite interest and draw out the powers of the mind. 



158 COMENIUS. 



Theory and the Practical Man. 



who is not also a Metaphysician? or an Ethical Thinker who 
does not know something of Physical Science ? or a Logician 
who has no knowledge of real matters? or a Theologiau, a 
jurisconsult, or a Physician, who is not first a Philosopher? 
or an Orator or Poet, who is not all these at once ? He 
deprives himself of light, of hand, and of regulation, who 
pushes away from him any shred of the knowable." (Quoted 
in Masson's L. of Milton vol. iij., p. 213 from the Delineatio, 
[i.e., Pansophice Prodro!nus\. Conf. J. H, Newman, Idea oj 
a University, Disc, iij.) 

§ 53- ^Ve see then that on the side of theory, Comenius 
was truly great. But the practical man who has always been 
the tyrant of the schoolroom cared nothing for theory and 
held, with a modern English minister responsible for educa- 
tion, who proved his ignorance of theory by his " New Code," 
that there was, and could be no such thing. So the reputa- 
tion of Comenius became pretty much what our great 
authority Hallam has recorded, that he was a person of some 
ingenuity and Uttle judgment who invented a new way of 
leainmg Latin, This estimate of him enables us to follow 
some windings in the stream of thought about education. 
Comenius faced the whole problem in its double bearing, 
theory and practice : he asked, What is the educator's task ? 
How can he best accomplish it? But his contemporaries 
had not yet recovered from the idolatry of Latin which had 
been bequeathed to them by their fathers from the Renas- 
cence, and they too saw in Comenius chiefly an inventor of 
a new way of learning Latin. He sought to train up chil- 
dren for this world and the next; they supposed, as 
Oxenstiern himself said, that the main thing to be remedied 
was the clumsy way of teaching Latin. So Comenius was 
Uttle understood. His books were seized upon as affording 



COMENIUS. 159 



Mother-tongue. Words and Things Together. 

at once an introduction to the knowledge of things and a 
short way of learning Latin. But in the long run they wei e 
found more tiresome than the old classics : so they went out 
of fashion, and their author was forgotten with them. Now 
that schoolmasters are forming a more worthy conception of 
their office, they are beginning to do justice to Comenius. 

§ 54. As the Jesuits kept to Latin as the common lan- 
guage of the Church, so Comenius thought to use it as a 
means of inter-communication for the instructed of every 
nationality. But he was singularly free from over-estimating 
the value of Latin, and he dera:aided that all nations should 
be taught in their own language wherein they were born. 
On this subject he expresses himself with great emphasis. 
"We desire and protest that studies of wisdom be no longer 
committed to Latin alone, and kept shut up in the schools, 
as has hitherto been done, to the greatest contempt and injury 
of the people at large, and the popular tongues. Let all 
things be delivered to each nation in its own speech." 
{DeliJicatio \Prodro7nus\ in Masson ut si/J)ra.) 

§ 55. Comenius was then neither a verbalist nor a 
cLihsicist, and yet his contemporaries were not entirely 
wrong in thinking of him as " a man who had invented a new 
way of learning Latin." His great principle was that instruc- 
tion in words and things should go together.* The young 
were to learn about things, and at the same time were to 
acquire both in the vernacular and also in Latin, the interna- 
tional tongue, the words which were connected with the 
things. Having settled on this plan of concurrent instruction 

* Ruskin seems to be echoing Comenius (of whom perhaps he never 
heard) when he says " To be taught to see is to gain word and thought 
at once, and both true." {^Address at Camb. Sch. of Art, Oct 1858.) 



l6o COMENIUS. 



Janua Linguarum. 



in words and things, Comenius determined to write a book 
for carrying it out. Just then there fell into his hands a book 
which a less open-minded man might have thrown aside on 
account of its origin, for it was written by the bitter foes and 
persecutors of the Bohemian Protestants, by the Jesuits. But 
Comenius says truly, " I care not whether I teach or whether 
I learn," and he gave a marvellous proof of this by adopting 
the linguistic method of the Jesuits' Janua Linguarum* 

* As far as my experience goes there are few men capable both of 
teaching; and being taught, and of these rare beings Comenius was a 
noble example. The passage in which he acknowledges his obligation 
to the Jesuits' Janua is a striking proof of his candour and open- 
mindedness. 

As an experiment in language-teaching \\i\% Janua is a very interesting 
book, and will be well worth a note. From Augustin and Alois de 
Backer's Bibliothique des Ea-ivaiiis de la C. de Jesus, I learn that the 
author William Dath or Bathe [Lalin Bateus] was born in Dublin in 
1564, and died in Madrid in 1614. "A brief introduction to the skill 
of song as set forth by William Bathe, gent." is attributed to him ; but 
we know nothing of his origin or occupation till he entered on the Jesuit 
noviciate at Tournai in 1596. Either before or after this "he ran" as 
he himself tells us " the pleasant race of study " at Beauvais. After 
studying at Padua he was sent as Spiritual Father to the Irish College 
at Salamanca. Here, according to C. Sommervogel he wrote two 
Latin books. He also designed Xhe Janua Linguarum, and carried out 
the plan with the help of the other members of the college. The book 
was published at Salamanca "apud de Cea Tesa" 1611,4°. Four 
years afterwards an edition with English version added was published in 
London edited by Wm. Welde. I have never seen the Spanish version, 
but a copy of Welde's edition (wanting title page) was bequeathed to me 
by a friend honoured by all English-speaking students of education, 
Joseph Payne. The Janua must have had great success in this country, 
and soon had other editors. In an old catalogue I have seen ^^ Janua 
Linguarum Quadrilinguis, or a Messe of Tongues, Latine, English, 
French, Spanish, neatly served up together for a wholesome repast to 



COMENIUS. l6l 



The Jesuits' Janua. 



This " Noah's Ark for words," treated in a series of proverbs 
of all kinds of subjects, in such a way as to introduce in a 
natural connection every common word in the Latin lan- 
guage. " The idea," says Comenius, " was better than the 



the worthy curiositie of the studious, sm. 4to, Matthew Lowndes, 1617." 
This must have been the early edition of Isaac Habrecht. I have his 
^^Jaiiua Linguarttm Silinguis. yfr,;'<?;////i(2(Strassburg), 1630," and in 
the Preface he says that the first English edition came out in 1615, and 
that he hai added a French version and published the book at London 
in four languages in 16 17. I have seen " sixth edition 1627," also pub- 
lished by jowndes, and edited "opera L H. (John Harmar, called in 
Catalogue of British Museum ' Rector of Ewhurst') Scholse Sancti Albani 
Magistri primarii." Harmar, I think, suppressed all mention of the 
author of the book, but he kept the title. This seems to have been 
altered by the celebrated Scioppius who published the book as Pascasii 
Grosippi Mercurius bilinguis. 

This Jesuits' Janua is one of the most interesting experiments in 
language teaching I ever met with. Bathe and his co-adjutors collected 
as they believed all the common root words in the Latin language ; and 
these they worked up into 1,200 short sentences in the form of proverbs. 
After the sentences follows a short Appendix De a7nbiguis of which 
the following is a specimen : " Dum malum comedis juxta malum navis, 
de malo commisso sub malo vetita meditare. While thou eatest an 
apple near the mast of a ship, think of the evil committed under the 
forbidden apple tree." An alphabetical index of all the Latin words is 
then given, with the number of the sentence in which the word occurs. 

Prefixed to \}i\\% Janua we find some introductory chapters in wh.ch the 
])roblem : What is the best way of learning a foreign language ? is con- 
sidered and some advance made towards a solution. "The body of eveiy 
language consisteth of four principal members — words, congruity, 
phrases, and elegancy. The dictionary sets down the words, giammar 
the congruities. Authors the phrases, and Rhetoricians (with their 
figures) the elegancy. We call phrases the proper forms or peculiar 
manner; of speaking which every Tongue hath." (Chap, i ad f.) 
M 



l62 COMENIUS. 



C. adapts Jesuits' Janua. 



execution. Nevertheless, inasmuch as they (the Jesuits) 
were the prime inventors, we thankfully acknowledge it, ncr 
will we upbraid them with those errors they have committed.'' 
(Preface to Anchoran's trans, oi/amia.) 

§ 56. The plan commended itself to Comenius on various 
grounds. First, he had a notion of giving an outline of all 
knowledge before anything was taught in detail. Next, he 



Hitherto, says Bathe, there have been in use, only two ways of learning 
a language, "regular, such as is grammar, to obser^'e the congruities ; 
and irregular such as is the common use of learners, by reading and 
speaking in vulgar tongues." The " regular" way is more certain, the 
" irregular" is easier^ So Bathe has planned a middle way which is to 
combine the advantages of the other two. The "congruities" are learnt 
rcgulaly by t])e grammar. Why are not the "words" learned regularly 
by the dictionary? 1st, Because the Dictionary contains many useless 
words ; 2nd, because compound words may be known from the root 
words without special learning ; 3rd, because words as they stand in the 
Dictionary bear no sense and so cannot be remembered. By the use of 
ihKjamta all these objections will be avoided. Useful words and root 
words only are given, and they are worked up into sentences "easy to 
be remembered." And with the exception of a few little words such as 
et, in, qui, su7n,fio no word occurs a second time; thus, says Bathe, 
the labour of learning the language will be lightened and "as it was 
much more easy to have known all the living creatures by often looking 
into Noe's Ark, wherein was a selected couple of each kind, than by 
travelling over all the world until a man should find here and there a 
creature of each kind, even in the same manner will all the words be 
far more easily learned by use of these sentences than by hearing, speak- 
ing or reading until a man do accidentally meet with every particular 
word." (Proeme fli/y!) " We hope no man will be s-o ingrateful as 
not to think this work very profitable," says the author. For my own 
part I feel grateful for such an earnest attempt at " retrieving of the 
curse of Babylon," but I cannot show my gratitude by declaring " this 
work very profitable." The attempt to squeeze the greater part of a 
language into 1,200 short sentences could produce nothing better than 



COMENIUS. 163 



Anchoran's edition of C.'s Janua. 

could by such a book connect the teaching about simple 
things with instruction in the Latin words which applied to 
them. And thirdly, he hoped by this means to give such a 
complete Latin vocabulary as to render the use of Latin easy 
for all requirements of modern society. He accordingly 
wrote a short account of things in general, which he put in 
the form of a dialogue, and this he published in Latin and 
German at Leszna in 1531. The success of this work, as 
we have already seen, was prodigious. No doubt the spirit 
which animated Bacon was largely diffused among educated 
men in all countries, and they hailed the appearance of a 
book which called the youth from the study of old philo- 
sophical ideas to observe the facts around them. 

§ 57. The countrymen of Bacon were not backward 
in adopting the new work, as the following, from the title- 
page of a volume in the British Museum, will show : " The 
Gate of Tongues Unlocked and Opened ; or else, a Seminary 
or Seed-plot of all Tongues and Sciences. That is, a short 
way of teaching and thoroughly learning, within a yeare and 
a half at the furthest, the Latine, English, French and any 
other tongue, with the ground and foundation of arts and 
sciences, comprised under a hundred titles and 1058 periods. 
In Latin first, and now, as a token of thankfulness, brought 
to light in Latine, English and French, in the behalfe of the 
most illustrious Prince Charles, and of British, French, and 
Irish youth. The 4th edition, much enlarged, by the labour 
and industry of John Anchoran, Licentiate in Divinity. 
London. Printed by Edward Griffin for Michael Sparke, 
dwelling at the Blew Bible in Green Arbor, 1639." The 
first edition must have been some years earlier, and the work 

axuriosity. The language could not be thus squeezed into the memory 
of the learner. 



164 COMENIUS. 



Change to be made by Janua. 



contains a letter to Anchoran from Comenius dated " Lessivse 
polonorum (Leszna) nth Oct, 1632." So we see that, 
however the connexion arose, it was Anchoran not 
llarthb who first made Comenius known in England. 

§ 58. In the preface to the volume (signed by Anchoran 
and Comenius) we read of the complaints of "Ascam, Vivas, 
Erasmus, Sturmius, FriscUnus, Dornavius and others." The 
Scaligers and Lipsius did climb but left no track. " Hence 
it is that the greater number of schools (howsoever some 
boast the happinesse of the age and the splendour of learn- 
ing) have not as yet shaked off their ataxies. The youth 
was held off, nay distracted, and is yet in many places 
delayed with grammar precepts infinitely tedious, perplexed, 
obscure, and (for the most part) unprofitable, and that foi 
many years." The names of things were taught to those 
who were in total ignorance of the things themselves. 

§ 59. From this barren region the pupil was to escape 
to become acquainted with things. " Come on," says the 
teacher in the opening dialogue, " let us go forth into the 
open air. There you shall view whatsoever God produced 
from the beginning, and doth yet effect by nature. After- 
wards we will go into towns, shops, schools, where you shall 
see how men do both apply those Divine works to their uses, 
and also instruct themselves in arts, manners, tongues. Then 
we will enter into houses, courts, and palaces of princes, to 
see in what manner communities of men are governed. At 
last we will visit temples, where you shall observe how 
diversely mortals seek to worship their Creator and to be 
spiritually united unto Him, and how He by His Almighti- 
ness disposeth all things." (This is from the 1656 edition, 
by " W.D.") 

The book is still amusing, but only from the quaint 



COMENIUS. 165 



Popularity of Janua shortlived. 



manner in which the mode of life two hundred years ago is 
described in it* 

§ 60. But though parts of the book may on first reading 
have gratified the youth of the seventeenth century, a great 
deal of it gave scanty information about difficult subjects, 
such as physiology, geometry, logic, rhetoric, and that too 
in the driest and dullest way. Moreover, in his first version 
(much modified at Saros-Patak) Comenius following the 
Jesuit boasts that no important word occurs twice ; so that 
the book, to attain the end of giving a perfect stock of Latin 
words, would have to be read and re-read till it was almost 
known by heart ; and however amusing boys might find an 
account of their toys written in Latin the first time of reading, 
the interest would somewhat wear away by the fifth or sixth 
time. We cannot then feel much surprised on reading this 
" general verdict," written some years later, touching those 
earlier works of Comenius : "They are of singular use, and 
very advantageous to those of more discretion (especially to 
such as have already got a smattering in Latin), to help 
their memories to retain what they have scatteringly gotten 
here and there, and to furnish them with many words which 
perhaps they had not formerly read or so well observed ; 

* This book must have had a great sale in England. Anchoran's 
version (the Latin title of which is Porta not Janua) went through 
several editions. I have a copy of Janua Linguarum Reserata 
*' formerly translated by Tho. Horn : afterwards much corrected and 
amended by Joh. Robotham : now carefully reviewtd and exactly com- 
pared with all former editions, foreign and others, and much enlarged 
both in the Latine and English : together with a Portall . . . by G. P. 
1647." " W. D." was a subsequent editor, and finally it was issued by 
Roger Daniel, to whom Comenius dedicates from Amsterdam in 1659 as 
"Domino Rogero Danieli, Bibliopolae ac Typographo Londinensi 
celeberrimo.!' 



l66 COMENIUS. 



Lubinus projector of Orbis Pictus. 

but to young children (whom we have chiefly to instruct, 
as those that are ignorant altogether of most things and 
words), they prove rather a mere toil and burden than a 
delight and furtherance." (Chas. Hoole's preface to his trans, 
of Orbis Pictus, dated "From my school in Lotlibury, London, 
Jan. 25, 1658.") 

§ 61. The ^^Janua^' would, therefore, have had but a 
■ short-lived popularity with teachers, and a still shorter with 
learners, if Comenius had not carried out his principle of 
appealing to the senses, and adopted a plan which had been 
suggested, nearly 50 years earlier, by a Protestant divine, 
Lubinus,* of Rostock. The artist was called in, and with 



• Eilhardus Lubinus or Eilert Lueben, born 1565 ; was Professor first 
of Poetry then of Theology at Rostock, where he died in 1621. This 
projector of the most famous school-book of modern times seems not to 
be mentioned in K. A. Schmid's great Ejicyklopddie, at least in the first 
edition. (I have not seen the second.) I find from F. Sander's I.exikon 
d. Pddagogik that Ratke declared he learnt nothing from Lubinus, 
while Comenius recognised him gratefully as his predecessor. This is 
just what we should have expected from the character of Ratke and of 
Comenius. Lubinus advocated the use of interlinear translations and 
published (says Sander) such translations of the New Testament, of 
riautus, &c. The very interesting Preface to the New Test., was 
translated into English by Hartlib and published as " The True and 
Readie Way to Learne the Latine Tongue by E. Lubinus," &c., 1O54. 
The dale given for Lubinus' preface is 1614. L. finds fault with the 
grammar teaching which is thrashed into boys so that they hale their 
masters. He would appeal to the senses: "For from these things 
falling under the sense of the eyes, and as it were more known, we will 
make entrance and begin to learn the Latin speech. Four-footed living 
creatures, creeping things, fishes and birds which can neither be gotten 
nor live well in these parts ought to be painted. Others also, which 
because of their bulk and greatness cannot be shut up in houses may be 
made in a lesser form, or drawn with the pencil, yet of such bigness a» 



COMENIUS. 167 



Orbis Pictus described. 



Endter at Nurnberg in 1657 was published the first edition 
of a book which long outlived the Janiia. This was the 
famous Orbis Sensualium Pictus, which was used for a cen- 
tury at least in many a schoolroom, and lives in imitations 
to the present day. Comenius wrote this book on the same 
lines as the fanua, but he goes into less detail, and every 
subject is ilUistrated by a small engraving. The text is 
mostly on the opposite page to the picture, and is connected 
with it by a series of corresponding numbers. Everything 
named in the text is numbered as in the picture. The artist 
employed must have been a bold man, as he sticks at nothing ; 
but in skill he was not the equal of many of his contem- 

they may be well seen by boys even afar off." He says he has often 
counselled the Stationers to bring out a book "in whicli all things 
whatsoever which may be devised and written and seen by the eyes, 
might be described, so as there might be also added to all things and 
all parts and members of things, its own proper word, its own proper 
appellation or term expressed in the Latin and Dutch tongues" (pp. 
22, 23). "Visible things are first to be known by the eyes" (p. 23), 
and the joining of seeing the thing and hearing the name together "is 
by far the profitablest and the bravest course, and passing fit and applic- 
able to the age of children." Things themselves if possible, if not, 
pictures (p. 25). There are some capital hints on teaching children 
from things common in the house, in the street, &c. One Hadrianus 
Junius has made a "nomenclator" that may be useful. In the pictures 
of the projected book there are to be lines under each object, and under 
its printed name. (The excellent device of corresponding numbers 
seems due to Comenius. ) For printing below the pictures L. also suggests 
sentences which are simpler and better for children than those in the 
Vestibulum, e.g. " Panis in Mensa positus est, Felis vorat Murem." 

In the Brit. Museum there is a copy of Medulla Lingucs Gracce in 
which L. works up the root words of Greek into sentences. He was 
evidently a man with ideas. Comenius thought of them so highly that 
he tried to carry out another at Saros-Patak, the plan of a "Coenobium" 
or Roman colony in which no language should be used but Latin. 



l63 COMENIUS. 

Why C.'s schoolbooks failed. 

poraries ; witness the pictures in the Schaffhausen Janua 
(Editio secunda, SchaffhusI, 1658), in Daniel's edition of 
the/afiua, 1562, and the very small but beautiful illustrations 
in the Vestibulimi of " Jacob Redinger and J. S." (Amsterdam, 
1673). However, the Orbis Fidus gives such a quaint 
delineation of life 200 years ago that copies with the original 
engravings keep rising in value, and an American publisher 
(Bardeen of Syracuse, New York), has lately reproduced the 
old book with the help of photography. 

§ 62. And yet as instruments of teaching, these books, 
i.e. the Vestibulum and the Janua and even the Orbis Fidus 
which in a great measure superseded both, proved a failure. 
How shall we account for this ? 

Comenius immensely over-estimated the importance of 
knowledge and the power of the human mind to acquire 
knowledge. He took it for the heavenly idea that man 
should know all tilings. This notion started him on the 
wrong road for forming a scheme of instruction, and it needed 
many years and much experience to show him his error. When 
he wrote the Orbis Tictus he said of it : " It is a little book, 
as you see, of no great bulk, yet a brief of the whole world 
and a whole language:" (Hoole's trans. Preface); and he 
afterwards speaks of " this our little eiicydopadia of things 
subject to the senses." But in his old age he saw that his 
text-books were too condensed and attempted too much 
(Laurie, p. 59) ; and he admitted that after all Seneca was 
right: "Melius est scire pauca et iis rectd uti quam scire 
niulta, quorum ignores usum. It is better to know a few 
things and have the right use of them than to know many 
things which you cannot use at all." 

§ 63. The attempt to give "information" has been the 
ruin of a vast number of professing educators since Comenius. 



COMENIUS. 169 



Compendia Dispendia. 



Masters " of the old school " whom some of us can still 
remember made boys learn Latin and Greek Grammar and 
nothing else. Their successors seem to think that boys 
should not learn Latin and Greek Grammar but everything 
else : and the last error I take to be much worse than the 
first. As Ruskin has neatly said, education is not teaching 
people to know what they do not know, but to behave as 
they do not be'iave. It is to be judged not by the knowledge 
acquired, but the habits, powers, interests : knowledge must 
be thought of " last and least." 

§ 64. So the attempt to teach about everything was 
unwise. The means adopted were unwise also. It is a 
great mistake to suppose that a "general view" should come 
first ; this is not the right way to give knowledge in any 
subject. "A child begins by seeing bits of everything — here 
a little and there a little ; it makes up its wholes out of its 
own littles, and is long in reaching the fulness of a whole ; 
and in this we are children all our lives in much." (Dr. John 
Brown in Horce Subsecivce, p. 5.) So nothing could have 
been much more unfortunate than an attempt to give the 
young "a brief of the whole world." Compendia, dispe7idia. 

§ 65. Corresponding to "a brief of the whole world," 
Comenius offers "a brief of a whole language." The two 
mistakes were well matched. In "the whole world" there 
are a vast number of things of which we must, and a good 
number of which we very advantageously may be ignorant. 
In a language there are many words which we cannot know 
and many more which we do not want to know. The 
language lives for us in a small vocabulary of essential words, 
and our hold upon the language depends upon the power 
we have in receiving and expressing thought by means of 
those words. But the Jesuit Bath, and after him Comenius, 



I/O COMENIUS. 



Comenius and Science of Education. 

made the tremendous mistake of treating all Latin words as 
of equal value, and took credit for using each word once 
and once only ! Moreover, Comenius wrote not simply to 
teach the Latin language, but also to stretch the Latin 
language till it covered the whole area of modern life. He 
aimed at two things and missed them both, 

§ 66. We see then that Comenius was not what Hallam 
calls him, " a man who invented a new way of learning 
Latin." He did not do this, but he did much more than 
this. He saw that every human creature should be trained 
up to become a reasonable being, and that the training 
should be such as to draw out God-given faculties. Thus 
he struck the key-note of the science of education. 



The quantity and the difTuseness of the writings of Comenius are truly 
bewildering. In these days eminent men, Carlyle, e.g., sometimes find 
it difilcult to get into print ; but printing-presses all over Europe seemed 
to be at the service of Comenius. An account of the various editions of 
theya««a would bean interesting piece of bibliography, but the task 
of making it would not be a light one. The earliest copy of which I 
can find a trace is entered in the catalogue of the Bodleian : "Comenius 
J. K. Janua Liiiguaruw, Svo, Lips (Leipzig) 1632." I also fintl there 
another copy entered "per Anchoranum, cum clave per W. Saltonsiall, 
London, 1633." 

The fame of Comenius is increasing and many interesting works have 
now been written about him. I have already mentioned the English 
books of Benham and Laurie. In German I have the following books, 
but not the time to read them all : — 

Daniel, H. A. Zerstreiite BUiller. Halle, 1866. 

Free, II. Pddagogik d. Cometiius. Bernljurg, 1884. 

Hiller, R. Lutein Methode d. /. A. Comenius. Zschopau, 1883. 
(v. g. and terse ; only 46 pp. ) 

MUller, Walter. Comenius ein Systematiker in d. Pad. Dresden, 
18S7. 

Pappenheim, E. Amos Cotnenius. Berlin, 1871. 



COMENIUS. 171 



Books on Comenius. 



Seyffarth, L. W. J. A. Comenius. Leipzig, 2nd edition, 1871. (A 
careful and, as far as I can judge in haste, an excellent piece of work.) 

Zoubek, Fr. J. J. A. Comenius. Eine quelleniiidssige Lebensskitz^, 
(Prefixed to trans, oi Didac. M. in Richter's Pdd. Bibliothek.) 

For a Port-Royalist's criticism of the /a mia, see infra, (p. 1S5 nou.) 



A 



XI. 

THE GENTLEMEN OF PORT-ROYAL* 



§ I. In the sixteen-hundreds by far the most successful 
schoolmasters were the Jesuits. In spite of their exclusion 
from the University, they had in the Province of Paris some 
14,000 pupils, and in Paris itself at the College de Clermont, 
1,800. Might they not have neglected "the Little Schools," 
which were organized by the friends and disciples of the 
Abbe de Saint-Cyran, schools in which the numbers were 
always small, about twenty or twenty-five, and only once 
increasing to fifty? And yet the Jesuits left no stone 
unturned, no weapon unemployed, in their attack on "the 
Little Schools." The conflict seems to us like an .engage- 
ment between a man-of-war and a fishing-boat. Thit the 
poor fishing-boat would soon be beneath the waves, was 
clear enough from the beginning, and she did indeed 
speedily disappear; but the victors have never recovered 
from their victory and never will. Whenever we think of 
Jesuitism we are not more forcibly reminded of Loyola than 
of Pascal. All educated Frenchmen, most educated people 
everywhere, get their best remembered impressions of tht; 
Society of Loyola from the Provincial Letters, f 



* For full titles of the books referred to see p. 195. 
+ The solitaries of Port- Royal used to vary their mental toil with 
manual. A Jesuit having maliciously asked whether it was true that 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 1 73 

The Jesuits and the Arnaulds. 



§ 2. The Society had a long standing rivalry with the 
University of Paris, and the University not only refused to 
admit the Jesuits, but several times petitioned the Parliament 
to chase them out of France. On one of these occasions 
the advocate who was retained by the University was: 
Antoine Arnauld, a man of renowned eloquence ; and he 
threw himself into the attack with all his heart. From that 
time the Jesuits had a standing feud with the house of 
Arnauld. 

§ 3. But it was no mere personal dislike that separated 
the Port-Royalists and the Jesuits. Port-Royal with which 
the Arnauld family was so closely united, became the 
stronghold of a theology which was unlike that of the 
Jesuits, and was denounced by them as heresy. The 
daughter of Antoine Arnauld was made, at the age of eleven 
years, Abbess of Port-Royal, a Cistercian convent not far from 
Versailles. This position was obtained for her by a fraud 
of Marion, Henry IV's advocate-general, who thought only 
of providing comfortably for one of the twenty children to 
whom his daughter. Made. Arnauld, had made him grand- 
father. Never was a nomination more scandalously obtained 
or used to better purpose. The Mere Angelique is one of 
the saints of the universal church, and she soon became the 
restorer of the religious life first in her own and then by her 
influence and example in other convents of her Order. 

§ 4. In these reforms she had nothing to fear from her 
hereditary foes the Jesuits ; but she soon came under the 
influence of a man whose theory of life was as much opposed 



Monsieur Pascal made shoes, met with the awkward repartee, "Je ne 
sals pas s'il fait des souliers, mais je crois qu'il vous a parte une fameus* 
bolte. " 



174 THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 

Saint-Cyran and Port-Royal. 

to the Jesuits' theory as to that of the world which found in 
the Jesuits the most accommodating father confessors. 

Duvergier de Hauranne (1581-1643) better known by 
the name of his "abbaye," Saint-Cyran, was one of those 
commanding spirits who seem born to direct others and 
form a distinct society. In vain Richeheu offered him the 
posts most hkely to tempt him. The prize that Saint-Cyran 
had set his heart upon was not of this world, and Riche- 
lieu could assist him in one way only — by persecution. 
This assistance the Cardinal readily granted, and by his 
orders Saint-Cyran was imprisoned at Vincennes, and not 
set at liberty till Richelieu was himself summoned before a 
higher tribunal. 

§ 5. Driven by prevailing sickness from Port-Royal des 
Champs, the Mere Ahgelique transported her community (in 
1626) to a house purchased for them in Paris by her mother 
who in her widowhood became one of the Sisters. In Paris 
Angelique sought for herself and her convent the spiritual 
direction of Saint-Cyran (not yet a prisoner), and from that 
time Saint-Cyran added the Abbess and Sisters of Port-Royal 
to the number of those who looked up to him as their 
pattern and guide in all things. 

Port-Royal des Champs was in course of time occupied 
by a band of solitaries who at the bidding of Saint-Cyran 
renounced the world and devoted themselves to prayer and 
study. To them we owe the works of " the Gentlemen of 
Port-Royak" 

§ 6. It is then to Saint-Cyran we must look for the 
ideas which became the distinctive mark of the Port 
Royalists. 

Saint-Cyran was before all things a theologian. In his 
early days at Bayonne his studies had been shared by a 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 1/5 

Saint-Cyran an " Evangelical." 

friend who afterwards was professor of theology at Louvain, 
and then Bishop of Ypres. This friend was Jansenius. 
Their searches after truth had brought them to opinions 
wliich in the England of the nineteenth century are known 
as " Evangelical." According to " Catholic " teaching all 
those who receive the creed and the sacraments of the 
Church and do not commit " mortal " sin are in a " state of 
salvation," that is to say the great majority of Christians are 
saved. This teaching is rejected by those of another school 
of thought who hold that only a few " elect " are saved and 
that the great body even of Christians are doomed to 
perdition. 

§ 7. Such a belief as this would seem to be associated 
of necessity with harshness and gloom ; but from whatever 
cause, there has been found in many, even in most, cases 
no such connexion. Those who have held that the great 
mass of their fellow-creatures had no hope in a future world, 
have thrown themselves lovingly into all attempts to improve 
their condition in this world. Still, their main effort has 
always been to increase the number of the converted and to 
preserve them from the wiles of the enemy. This Saint- 
Cyran sought to do by selecting a few children and bringing 
them up in their tender years like hot-house plants, in the 
hope that they would be prepared when older and stronger, 
to resist the evil influences of the world. 

§ 8. His first plan was to choose out of all Paris six 
children and to confide them to the care of a priest appointed 
to direct their consciences, and a tutor of not more than 
Iwenty-five years old, to teach them Latin. "I should 
think," says he, "it was doing a good deal if I did not 
advance them far in Latin before the age of twelve, and 
made them pass their first years confined to one house or a 



176 THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 

Short career of the Little Schools. 

monastery in the country where they might be allowed all the 
pastimes suited to their age and where they might see only 
the example of a good life set by those about them." 
(Letter quoted by Carre, p. 20.) 

§ 9. His imprisonment put a stop to this plan, "but," 
says Saint-Cyran, " I do not lightly break off what I under- 
take for God ;" so when intrusted with the disposal of 2,000 
francs by M. Bignon, he started the first " Little School," in 
which two small sons of M. Bignon's were taken as pupils. 
The name of "Little Schools," was given partly perhaps 
because according to their design the numbers in any school 
could never be large, partly no doubt to deprecate any 
suspicion of rivalry with the schools of the University. The 
children were to be taken at an early age, nine or ten, before 
they could have any guilty knowledge of evil, and Saint- 
Cyran made in all cases a stipulation that at any time a 
child might be returned to his friends ; but in cases where 
the master's care seemed successful, the pupils were to be 
kept under it till they were grown up. 

§ 10. The Little Schools had a short and troubled 
career of hardly more than fifteen years. They were not 
fully organized till 1646; they were proscribed a few years 
later and in 1661 were finally broken up by Louis XIV, who 
was under the influence of their enemies the Jesuits. But 
in that time the Gentlemen of Port-Royal had introduced 
new ideas which have been a force in French education and 
indeed in all literary education ever since. 

To Saint-Cyran then we trace the attempt at a particular 
kind of school, and to his followers some new departures in 
the training of the intellect. 

§ II. Basing his system on the Fall of Man, Saint-Cyran 
came to a conclusion which was also reached by Locke 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 177 



Saint-Cyran & Locke on Public Schools. 

though by a different road. To both of them it seemed 
that children require much more individual care and watch- 
ing than they can possibly get in a public school. Saint- 
Cyran would have said what I.ocke said : "The difference 
is great between two or three pupils in the same house and 
three or four score boys lodged up and down : for let the 
master's industry and skill be never so great, it is impossible 
he should have fifty or one hundred scholars under his eye 
any longer than they are in school together : Nor can it be 
expected that he should instruct them successfully in any- 
thing but their books ; the forming of their minds and 
manners [preserving them from the danger of the enemy, 
Saint-Cyran would have said] requiring a constant attention 
and particular application to every single boy, which is 
impossible in a numerous flock, and would be wholly in 
vain (could he have time to study and correct everyone's 
peculiar defects and wrong inclinations) when the lad was 
to be left to himself or the prevailing infection of 
his fellows the greater part of the four-and-twenty hours." 
{Thoughts c. Ed. § 70.) 

§ 12. An English public schoolmaster told the Com- 
mission on Public Schools, that he stood in loco pare?itis to 
fifty boys. " Rather a large family," observed one of the 
Commissioners drily. The truth is that in the bringing up 
of the young there is the place of the schoolmaster and of 
the school-fellows, as well as that of the parents ; and of 
thpse several forces one cannot fulfil the functions of the 
others. 

§ 13. According to the theory or at least the practice of 
English public schools, boys are left in their leisure hours to 
organize their life for themselves, and they form a community 
from which the masters are, partly by their own over-work, 



178 THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 

Shadow-side of Public Schools. 

partly by the traditions of the school, utterly excluded. From 
this the intellectual education of the boys no doubt suffers. 
•' Engage them in conversation with men of parts and 
breeding," says Locke ; and this was the old notion ol 
training when boys of good family grew up as pages in the 
household of some nobleman. But, except in the holidays, 
the young aristocrats of the present day talk only with other 
boys, and servants, and tradesmen. Hence the amount of 
thought and conversation given to school topics, especially 
the games, is out of all proportion to the importance of such 
things ; and this does much to increase what Matthew 
Arnold calls " the barbarians' " inaptitude for ideas, 

§ 14. What are we to say about the efi'ects of the system 
on the morals of the boys ? If we were to start like Saint- 
Cyran from the doctrine of human depravity, we should 
entirely condemn the system and predict from it the most 
disastrous results ;* but from experience we come to a very 



* A master in a great public school once stated in a school address 
what masters and boys felt to be true, " It would hardly be too much 
to say that the whole problem of education is how to surround the 
young with good influences, I believe we must go on to add that if the 
wisest man had set himself to work out this proMem without the teach- 
ing of experience, he would have been little likely to hit upon the system 
of which we are so proud, and which we call " the Public School 
System." If the real secret of education is to surround the young with 
good influences, is it not a strange paradox to take them at the very agft 
when influences act most despotically and mass them together in large 
numbers, where much that is coarsest is sure to be tolerated, and much 
that is gentlest and most refining — the presence of mothers and sisters 
for example — is for a large part of the year a memory or an echo rather 
than a living voice? I confess I have never seen any answers to this 
objection which apart from the test of expenence I should have been 
prepared to pronounce satisfactory. It is a simple truth that the moral 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 1/9 

The Little Schools for the few only. 

different conclusion. Bishop Dupanloup, indeed, spoke of 
the public schools of France as " ces gouffres." This is not 
what is said or thought of the English schools, and they are 
filled with boys whose fathers and grandfathers "were brought 
up in them, and desire above all things to maintain the old 
traditions. 

§ 15. The Little Schools of Port-Royal aimed at train- 
ing a few boys very differently ; each master had the charge 
of five or six only, and these were never to be out of his 
presence day or night.* 

§ 16. It may reasonably be objected that such schools 
would be possible only for a few children of well-to-do parents, 
and that men who would thus devote themselves could be 
found only at seasons of great enthusiasm. Under ordinary 
circumstances small schools have most of the drawbacks 
and few of the advantages which are to be found in large 



dangers of our Public School System are enormous. It is the simple 
truth that do what you will in the way of precaution, you do give to 
boys of low, animal natures, the very boys who ought to be exceptionally 
subject to almost despotic restraint, exceptional opportunities of exer- 
cising a debasing influence over natures far more refined and spiritual 
than their own. And it is further the simple but the sad truth, that 
these exceptional opportunities are too often turned to account, and 
that the young boy's character for a time — sometimes for a long time- 
is spoiled or vulgarized by the influence of unworthy companions." 
This is what public schoolmasters, if their eyes are not blinded by 
routine, are painfully conscious of. But they find that in the end good 
prevails ; the average boy gains a manly character and contributes 
towards the keeping up a heaUhy public opinion which is of great effect 
in restraining the evil-doer. 

* " The number of boarders was never very great, because to a master 
were assigned no more than he could have beds for in his room." 
(Fontaine's Memoire, Carre, p. 24. ) 



l80 THE PORT-ROYALTSTS. 

Advantages of great schools. 

schools. As I have already said, parents, schoolmasters, 
and school-fellows have separate functions in education ; 
and even in the smallest school the master can never take 
the place of the parent, or the school become the home. 
Children at home enter into the world of their father and 
mother; the family friends are their friends, the family 
events affect them as a matter of course. But in the school, 
however small, the children's interests are unconnected with 
the master and the master's family. The boys may be on 
the most intimate, even affectionate terms with the grown 
people who have charge of them ; but the mental horizon of 
the two parties is very different, and their common area of 
vision but small. In such cases the young do not rise into 
the world of the adults, and it is almost impossible for the 
adults to descend into theirs. They are " no company " the 
one for the other, and to be constantly in each other's 
presence would subject both to very irksome restraint. 
When left to themselves, boys in small numbers are far 
more likely to get into harm than boys in large numbers. 
In large communities even of boys, " the common sense of 
most" is a check on the badly disposed. So as it seems to 
me if from any cause the young cannot live at home and 
attend a day-school, they will be far better off in a large 
boarding school than in one that would better fulfil the 
requirements of Erasmus,* Saint-Cyran, and Locke. 

• " Plerisque placet media quasdam ratio, ut apudunum Proccertorem 
quinque sexve pueri instituantur : ita nee sodalitas deerit aetati, cui 
convenit alacritas ; neque non sufficiet singulis cura Prreceptoris ; et 
facile vitabitur corruptio quam affert multitudo. Many take up with a 
middle course, and would have five or six boys placed with one pre- 
ceptor ; in this way they will not be without companionship at an age 
when from their liveliness they seem specially to need it, and the master 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. l8l 

Choice of masters & servants. Watch & pray. 

§ 17. As Saint-Cyran attributed immense importance to 
tlie part of the master in education, he was not easily 
satisfied with his quahfications. "There is no occupation 
in the Church that is more worthy of a Christian ; next to 
giv'ing up one's hfe there is no greater charity . . . The 
charge of the soul of one of these little ones is a higher 
employment than the government of all the world." (Cadet, 
2.) So thought Saint-Cyran, and he was ready to go to the 
ends of the earth to find the sort of teacher he wanted. 

§ 18. He was so anxious that the children should see 
only that which was good that the servants were chosen with 
peculiar care. 

§ 19. For the masters his favourite rule was: "Speak 
little ; put up with much ; pray still more." Piety was not 
to be instilled so much by precepts as by the atmosphere in 
which the children grew up. " Do not spend so much time 
in speaking to them about God as to God about them :" so 
formal instruction was never to be made wearisome. But 
there was to be an incessant watch against evil influences 
and for good. " In guarding the citadel," says Lancelot, 
"we fail if we leave open a single gateway by which the 
enemy might enter." 

§ 20. Though anxious, like the Jesuits, to make their 
boys' studies " not only endurable, but even dehghtful," the 
Gentlemen of Port-Royal banished every form of rivalry 
Each pupil was to think of one whom he should try to catch 
up, but this was not a school-fellow, but his own higher self, his 



may give sufficient care to each individual ; moreover, there will be an 
easy avoidance of the moral corruption which numbers bring." Erasmus 
on Christian Marriage quoted by Coustel in Sainte-Beuve, P.Riij, bk. 
4, p. 404. 



I 82 THE PORT-ROYALISTS 

No rivalry or pressure. Freedom from routine. 

ideal. Here Pascal admits that the exclusion of competition 
had its drawbacks and that the boys sometimes became 
indifferent — " tombent dans la nonchalance," as he says. 

§ 2T. As for the instruction it was founded on this 
principle : the object of schools being piety rather than 
knowledge there was to be no pressure in studying, but the 
children were to be taught what was sound and enduring. 

§ 22. In all occupations there is of necessity a tradition. 
In the higher callings the tradition may be of several kinds. 
First there may be a tradition of noble thoughts and high 
ideals, which will be conveyed in the words of the greatest 
men who have been engaged in that calling, or have thought 
out the theory of it. Next there will be the tradition of the 
very best workers in il. And lastly there is the tradition of 
the common man who learns and passes on just the ordinary 
views of his class and the ordinary expedients for getting 
through ordinary work. Of these different kinds of tradition, 
the school-room has always shown a tendency to keep to this 
last, and the common man is supreme. Young teachers are 
mostly required to fulfil their daily tasks without the 
smallest preparation for them ; so they have to get through 
as best they can, and have no time to think of any high 
ideal, or of any way of doing their work except that which 
gives them least trouble. " Practice makes perfect," says 
the proverb, but it would be truer to say that practice in 
doing work badly soon makes perfect in contentment with 
bad workmanship. Thus it is that the tradition of the 
school-room settles down for the most part into a deadly 
routine, and teachers who have long been engaged in carry- 
ing it on seem to lose their powers of vision like horses who 
iUrn mills in the dark. 

The Gentlemen of Port-Royal worked free from school- 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 1 83 

Study a delight. Reading French first. 

room tradition. "If the want of emulation was a drawback," 
says Sainte-Beuve, "it was a clear gain to escape from all 
roiitine, from all pedantry. La crasse et la morgue des 
regefits n!e?i approchaient pas.^^ {^P.R. vol. iij, p. 414.) Piety 
ai we have seen was their main object. Next to it they 
wished to " carry the intellects of their pu])ils to the highest 
point they could attain to." 

§ 23. In doing this they profited by their freedom from 
routine to try experiments. They used their own judgments 
and sought to train the judgment of their pupils. Them- 
selves knowing the delights of literature, they resolved that 
their pupils should know them also. They would banish all 
useless difficulties and do what they could to " help the 
young and make study even more pleasant to them than play 
and pastime." (Preface to Cic.'s Billets, quoted by Sainte- 
Beuve, vol. iij, p. 423.) 

§ 24. One of their innovations, though startling to their 
contemporaries, does not seem to us very surprising. It 
was the custom to begin reading with a three or four years' 
course of reading Latin, because in that language all the 
letters were pronounced. The connexion between sound 
and sense is in our days not always thought of, but even 
among teachers no advocates would now be found for the 
old method which kept young people for the first three or 
four years uttering sounds they could by no possibility 
understand. The French language might have some dis- 
advantage from its silent letters, but this was small compared 
with the disadvantage felt in Latin from its silent sense. 
So the Port-Royalists began reading with French. 

§ 25. Further than this, they objected to reading through 
spelling, and pointed out that as consonants cannot be 
pronounced by themselves they should be taken only in 



1 84 THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 

Literature. Mother-tongue first. 

connexion with the adjacent vowel. Pascal applied himself 
to the su])ject and invented the method described in the 
6th chap, of the General Grammar (Carre, p. xxiij) and 
introduced by his sister Jacqueline at Port-Royal des 
Champs. 

§ 26. When the child could read French, the Gentlemen 
of Port-Royal sought for him books within the range of his 
intelligence. There was nothing suitable in French, so they 
set to work to produce translations in good French of the 
most readable Latin books, " altering them just a Httle — en 
y changeant fort peu de chose" as said the chief translator 
De Saci, for the sake of purity. In this way they gallicised 
the Fables of Phsedrus, three Comedies of Terence, and 
the Familiar Letters (Billets) of Cicero. 

§ 27. In this we see an important innovation. As I 
have tried to explain {supra pp. 14 ff.) the effect of the 
Renascence was to banish both the mother-tongue and 
literature proper from the school-room ; for no language was 
tolerated but Latin, and no literature was thought possible 
except in Latin or Greek. Before any literature could be 
known, or indeed, instruction in any subject could be given, 
the pupils had to learn Latin. This neglect of the mother- 
tongue was one of the traditional mistakes pointed out and 
abandoned by the Port-Royalists. "People of quality 
complain," says De Saci, "and complain with reason, that 
in giving their children Latin we take away French, and to 
turn them into citizens of ancient Rome we make them 
strangers in their native land. After learning Latin and 
Greek for 10 or 12 years, we are often obliged at the age of 
30 to learn French." (Cadet, 10.) So Port-Royal proposed 
breaking through this bondage to Latin, and laid down the 
principle, new in France, though not in the country of 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 1 85 

Beginners' difficulties lightened. 

Mulcaster or of Ratke, that everything should be taught 
through the mother-tongue. 

Next, the Port-Royahsts sought to give their pupils an 
early and a pleasing introduction to literature. The best 
literature in those days was the classical ; and suitable works 
from that literature might be made intelligible by means oj 
translations. In this way the Port-Royalists led their pupils 
to look upon some of the classical authors not as inventors 
of examples in syntax, but as writers of books that meant 
something. And thus both the mother-tongue and literature 
were brought into the school-room. 

§ 28. When the boys had by this means got some 
feeling for literature and some acquaintance with the world 
of the ancients, they began the study of Latin. Here again 
all needless difficulties were taken out of their way. No 
attempt indeed was made to teach language without grammar, 
the rationale of language, but the science of grammar was 
reduced to first principles (set forth in the Grainmaire 
Generale et Raisonn'ee of Arnauld and Lancelot), and the 
special grammar of the Latin language was no longer taught 
by means of the work established in the University, the 
Latin Latin Grammar of Despautbre, but by a "New Method" 
written in French which gave essentials only and had for its 
motto : " Mihi inter virtutes grammatici habebitur aliqua 
nescire — To me it will be among the grammarian's good 
points not to know everything." (Quintil.)* 

* Lancelot's "New way of easily learning Latin [Notivelle Methode 
pour apprendre facilement la langue LatineY' was published in 1644, his 
nietliod for Greek in 1655. This was followed in 1657 by his "Garden 
of Greek Roots [Jardin des racines grecquts) " (see Cadet, pp. 15 ff. ) 

The Port- Royalists seem to me in some respects far behind Comenius, 
but they were right in rejecting him as a meth'^diser in language* 



1 86 THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 

Begin with Latin into Mother-tongue. 



§ 29. With this minimum of the essentials of the 
grammar and with a previous acquaintance with the sense o( 
the book the pupils were introduced to the Latin languaee 
and were taught to translate a Latin author into French. 
This was a departure from the ordinary route, which after a 
course of learning grammar-rules in Latin went to the 
" theme," i.e., to composition in Latin. 

The art of translating into the mother-tongue was made 
much of. School " construes," which consist in substituting 
a word for a word, were entirely forbidden, and the pupils 
had to produce the old writer's thoughts /;/ French.* 



learning. Lancelot in the preface to his "Garden of Greek Roots," 
says that the Jamia of Comenius is totally wanting in method. *' It 
would need," says he, "an extraordinary memory; and from my ex- 
perience I should say that few children could learn this book, for it is 
long and difficult ; and as the words in it are not repeated, those at the 
beginning would be forgotten before the learner reached the end. So 
he would feel a constant discouragement, because he would always find 
himself in a new country where he would recognize nothing. And the 
book is fuU of all sorts of uncommon and difficult words, and the first 
chapters throw no light on those which follow." To this well-grounded 
criticism he adds : " The entrances to the Tongues, to deserve its name, 
should be nothing but a short and simple way leading us as soon as 
possible to read the best books in the language, so that we might not 
only acquire the words we are in need of, but also all that is most 
characteristic in the idiom and pure in the phraseology, which make up 
the most difficult and most important part of every language." (Quotei 
by Cadet, p. \j). 

* Lemaitre, a nephew of La M^re Angelique, was one of the most 
celebrated orators in France. In renouncing the world for Port-Royal, 
he retired from a splendid position at the Bar. Such men had qualifi- 
cations out of the reach of ordinary schoolmasters. Dufoss^, in after 
years, told how, when he was a boy, Lemaltre called him often to his 
room and gave him solid instruction in learning and piety. " He read 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 187 

Sense before Sound. Reason must rule. 

§ 30. From this we see that the training was literary 
But in the study of form the Port-Royalists did not neglect 
the inward for the outward. Their great work, which still 
stands the attacks of time, is the Port-Royal Logic, or the 
A "t of Thinking {see liXdins. by T. Spencer Baynes, 1850), 
This was substantially the work of Arnauld ; and it was 
Arnauld who led the Port-Royahsts in their rupture with the 
philosophy of the Middle Age, and who openly followed 
Descartes. In the Logic we find the claims of reason 
asserted as if in defiance of the Jesuits. " It is a heavy 
bondage to think oneself forced to agree in everything with 
Aristotle and to take him as the standard of truth in 

philosophy The world cannot long continue in 

this restraint, and is recovering by degrees its natural and 
reasonable liberty, which consists in accepting that which 
we judge to be true and rejecting that which we judge to be 
false." (Quoted by Cadet, p. 31.)* 



to me and made me read pieces from poets and orators, and saw that 
I noticed the beauties in them both in thought and diction. Moreover 
he taught me the right emphasis and articulation both in verse and 
prose, in which he himself was admirable, having the charm of a fine 
voice and all else that goes to make a great orator. He gave me also 
many rules for good translation and for making my progress in that art 
easy to me." (Dufosse's Memoires, &=€., quoted by Cadet, p. 9.) It was 
Lcmaitre who instructed Racine (born 1639, admitted at Les Granges, 
Port Royal des Champs, in 1655). 

* In 1670 the General of the Jesuits issued a letter to the Society against 
the Cartesian philosophy. The University in this agreed with its rivals, 
and petitioned the Parliament to prohibit the Cartesian teaching. This 
produced the burlesque Arr^t by Boileau (1675). " Whereas it is stated 
that for some years past a stranger named Reason has endeavoured to 
make entry by force into the Schools of the University . . . where 
Aristotle has always been acknowledged as judge without appeal and 



1 8^ THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 

Not Baconian. The body despised. 

§ 31. To mark the change, the Port- Royalists called 
their book not "the Art of Reasoning," but "the Ar": of 
Thinking," and it was in this art of thinking that thoy 
endeavoured to train their scholars. They paid great 
attention to geometry, and Arnauld wrote a book ("New 
Elements of Geometry ") which so well satisfied Pascal that 
after reading the MS. he burnt a similar work of his own. 

§ 32. The Port-Royalists then sought to introduce into 
the school-room a "sweet reasonableness." They were not 
touched, as Comenius was, by the spirit of Bacon, and knew 
nothing of a key for opening the secrets of Nature. They 
loved hterature and resolved that their pupils should love it 
also ; and with this end they would give the first notions of 
it in the mother-tongue ; but the love of literature still 
bound them to the past, and they aimed simply at making 
the best of the Old Education without any thought of a 
New. 

§ ^^. In one respect they seem less wise than Rabelais 
and Mulcaster, less wise perhaps than their foes the Jesuits. 
They gave little heed to training the body, and thought of 
the soul and the mind only ; or if they thought of the body 
they were concerned merely that it should do no harm. 
" Not only must we form the minds of our pupils to virtue," 

not accountable for his opinions ... Be it known by these presents 
that this Court has maintained and kept and does maintain and keep 
the said Aristotle in perfect and peaceable possession of the said schools 
. . . and in order that for the future he may not be interfered with in 
them, it has banished Reason for ever from the Schools of the said 
University, and forbids his entry to disturb and disquiet the said 
Aristotle in the possession and enjoyment of the aforesaid schools, under 
pain and penalty of being declared a Jansenist and a lover of innova- 
tions." (Quoted by Cadet, p. 34.) 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 1 89 

Pedagogic writings of Port- Royalists. 

says Nicole, " we must also bend their bodies to it, that is, 
we must endeavour that the body do not prove a hin- 
drance to their leading a well-regulated life or draw them by 
its weight to any disorder. For we should know that as 
men are made up of mind and body, a wrong turn given to 
the body in youth is often in after life a great hindrance to 
piety." ( Fues p. bien clever un prince, quoted by Cadet, 
p. 206.) 

§ 34. But let us not underrate the good effect produced 
by this united effort of Christian toil and Christian thought. 
*' Nothing should be more highly esteemed than good sense," 
(Preface to the Logique), and Port-Royal did a great work 
in bringing good sense and reason to bear on the practice 
of the school-room. When the Little Schools were dispersed 
the Gentlemen still continued to teach, but the lessons they 
gave were now in the " art of thinking " and in the art of 
teaching ; and all the world might learn of them, for they 
taught in the only way left open to them ; they published 
books. 

§ 35. Of these writers on pedagogy the most distin- 
guished was "the great Arnauld," i.e., Antoine Arnauld, 
(161 2-1694) brother of the Mere Angelique. His "Rcglement 
des Etiidts" shows us how literary instruction was given at 
Port-Royal. In these directions we have not so much the 
rules observed in the Little Schools as the experience of the 
Little Schools rendered available for the schools of the 
University. On this account Sainte-Beuve speaks of the 
Reglement of Arnauld as forming a preface to the Treatise 
Oft Studies {Traite des Etudes) of RoUin. In the Reglement 
we see Arnauld yielding to what seems a practical necessity 
and admitting competition and prizes. Some excellent 
advice is given, especially on practice in the use of the 



I90 THE rORT-ROYALISTS. 

Arnauld. Nicole. 

mother-tongue. The young people are to question and 
answer each other about the substance of what they have 
read, about the more remarkable thoughts in their author or 
the more beautiful expressions. Each day two of the boys 
are to narrate a story which they themselves have selected 
from a classical author.* 

§ 36. With the notable exception of Pascal, Arnauld 
was the most distinguished writer among the Gentlemen or 
Port-Royal. A writer less devoted to controversy than 
Arnauld, less attached to the thought of Saint-Cyran and of 
Descartes, but of wider popularity, was Nicole, who had 
Made, de S^vigne for an admirer, and Locke for one of his 
translators. 

Nicole has given us a valuable contribution to pedagogy 
in his essay on the right bringing-up of a prince. ( Vues 
gen'erales pour bien elever un pfince.) In this essay he shows 
us with what thought and care he had applied himself to 
the art of instruction, and he gives us hints that all teachers 
may profit by. Take the following : — 

§ 37. "Properly speaking it is not the masters, it is no 
instruction from without, that makes things understood ; at 
the best the masters do nothing but expose the things to the 
interior light of the mind, by which alone they can be 
understood. It follows that where this light is wanting 
instruction is as useless as trying to shew pictures in the 
dark. The very greatest minds are nothing but lights in 
confinement, and they have always sombre and shady spots ; 
but in children the mind is nearly full of shade and emits 

• Although so much lime is given to the study of words, practice in 
the use of words is almost entirely neglected, and the English schoolboy 
remains inarticulate. 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. I9I 

Light from within. Teach by the Senses. 

but little rays of light. So everything depends on making 
the most of these rays, on increasing them and exposing to 
them what one wishes to have understood. For this reason 
it is bard to give general rules for instructing anyone, 
because the instruction must be adapted to the mixture ot 
light and darkness, which differs widely in different minds, 
especially with children. We must look where the day is 
breaking and bring to it what we wish them to understand ; 
and to do this we must try a variety of ways for getting at 
their minds and must persevere with such as we find have 
most success. 

" But generally speaking we may say that, as in children 
the light depends greatly on their senses, we should as far 
as possible attach to the senses the instruction we give 
them, and make it enter not only by the ear but also by the 
sight, as there is no sense which makes so lively an impres- 
sion on the mind and forms such sharp and clear ideas." 

This is excellent. There is a wise proverb that warns us 
that " however soon we get up in the morning the sunrise 
comes never the earlier." A vast amount of instruction is 
thrown away because the instructors will not wait for the 
day-break. 

§ 38. For the moral training of the young there is one 
qualification in the teacher which is absolutely indispensable 
— goodness. Similarly for the intellectual training, there is 
an indispensable qualification — intelligence. This is the 
qualification required by the system of Port-Royal, but not 
required in working the ordinary machinery of the school- 
room either in those days or in ours. When Nicole has 
described how instruction should be given so as to train the 
judgment and cultivate the taste, he continues : 

" As this kind of instruction comes without observation, 



192 THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 

Best teaching escapes common tests. 

so is the profit derived from it likely to escape observation 
also ; that is, it will not announce itself by anything on the 
surface and palpable to the common man. And on tbij 
account persons of small intelligence are mistaken about il 
and think that a boy thus instructed is no better than 
another, because he cannot make a better translation from 
Latin into French, or beat him in saying his Virgil. Thus 
judging of the instruction by these trifles only, they often 
make less account of a really able teacher than of one of 
little science and of a mind without light." (Nicole in 
Cadet, p. 204; Carre, p. 187.) 

In these days of marks and percentages we seem agreed 
that it must be all right if the children can stand the tests 
of the examiner or the inspector. Something may no doubt 
be got at by these tests ; but we cannot hope for any genuine 
care for education while everything is estimated '■'■par des 
signes grossiers et exferietirs." 

• § 39- Whatever was required to adapt the thought of Port- 
Royal to the needs of classical schools, especially the schools 
of the University of Paris was supplied by RoUin (1661- 
1741) whose Traite des Etudes or "Way of teaching and 
studying Literature," united the lessons of Port-Royal with 
much material drawn from his own experience and from his 
acquaintance with the writings of other authors, especially 
Quintilian and Seneca. Having been twice Rector of the 
University (in 1694 and 1695) Rollin had managed to bring 
into the schools much that was due to Port-Royal ; and in 
his Traite he has the tact to give the improved methods as 
the ordinary practice of his colleagues. 

§ 40. Much that Rollin has said applies only to classical 
or at most to literary instruction ; but some of his advice 
will be good for all teachers as long as the human mind 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 193 

Studying impossible without a will. 

needs instruction. I have met with nothing that seems to 
me to go more truly to the very foundation of the ait of 
teaching than the following : 

" We should never lose sight of this grand principle that 
siUDY DEPENDS ON THE WILL, and the will does not endure 
constraint : ' Studium discendi voluntate quce cogi non potest 
constat.^ (Quint, j, i, cap. 3.)* We can, to be sure, put 
constraint on the body and make a pupil, however unwilling, 
stick to his desk, can double his toil by punishment, compel 

* Rollin somewhat extends Quintilian's statement : " The desire 
of learning rests in the will which you cannot force." About attempts 
to coerce the will in the absence of interest, I may quote a passage 
from a lecture of mine at Birmingham in 18S4, when I did not know 
that I had behind me such high authorities as Quintilian and Rollin : 
" I should divide the powers of the mind that may be cultivated in the 
school-room into two classes : in the first I should put all the higher 
powers — grasp of meaning, perception of analogy, observation, reflection, 
imagination, intellectual memory ; in the other class is one power only, 
and that is a kind of memory that depends on the association of sounds. 
How is it then that in most school-rooms far more time is spent in 
cultivating this last and least-valuable power than all the rest put 
together? The explanation is easy. All the higher powers can be 
exercised only when the pupils are interested, or, as Mr. Thring puts it, 
'care for what they are about.' The memory that depends on as- 
sociating sounds is independent of interest and can be secured by simple 
repetition. Now it is very hard to awaken interest, and still harder to 
maintain it. That magician's wand, the cane, with which the school- 
masters of olden time worked such wonders, is powerless here or 
poweifui only in the negative direction ; and so is every form of punish- 
ment. You may tell a boy — ' If you can't say your lesson you shall 
stay in and write it out half-a-dozen times !' and the threat may have 
effect ; but no ' instans tyrannus ' from Orbilius downwards has ever 
thought of saying, ' If you don't take an interest in your work, I'll keep 
you in till you do ! ' So teachers very naturally prefer the kind of 
teaching in which they can make sure of success." 
o 



194 THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 

Against making beginnings bitter. 

him to finish a task imposed upon him, and with this object 
we can deprive him of play and recreation. But is this 
work of the galley-slave studying? And what remains tc 
the pupil from this kind of study but a hatred of books, of 
learning, and of masters, often till the end of his days ? It 
is then the will that we must draw on our side, and this we 
must do by gentleness, by friendliness, by persuasion, and 
above all by the allurement of pleasure." {Traite, 8th Bk. 
J')u Gouvemenwit des Classes , i'* Par tie. Art. x.) 

§ 41. The passage I have quoted is from the Article 
"on giving a taste for study (retidre P etude aiinable);" and 
if some masters do not agree that this is " one of the most 
important points concerning education," they will not deny 
that " it is at the same time one of the most difficult." As 
Rollin truly says, " among a very great number of masters 
who in other respects are highly meritorious there will be 
found very few who manage to get their pupils to like their 
work." 

§ 42. One of the great causes of the disinclination for 
school work is to be found according to Rollin and Quintilian, 
in the repulsive form in which children first become 
acquainted with the elements of learning. " In this matter 
success depends very much on first impressions ; and the 
main effort of the masters who teach the first rudiments 
should be so to do this, that the child who cannot as yet 
love study should at least not get an aversion for it from 
that time forward, for fear lest the bitter taste once acquired 
should still be in his mouth when he grows older."* (Begin, 
of Art. X, as above.) 

• Here as usual Rollin uses Quintilian without directly quoting him. 
He gives in a note the passage he had in his mind. " Id imprimis 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. IQS 

Port-Royal advance. Books on P.-R. 

§ 43. In this matter Rollin was more truly the disciple of 
the Port-Royalists than of Quintilian, They it was who 
protested against the dismal " grind " of learning to read 
first in an unknown tongue, and of studying the rules of 
Latin in Latin with no knowledge of Latin, a course which 
professed to lead, as Sainte-Beuve puts it, " to the unknown 
through the unintelligible." They directed their highly- 
trained intellects to the teaching of the elements, and 
succeeded in proving that the ordinary difficulties were due 
not to the dulness of the learners, but to the stupidity of the 
masters. They showed how much might be done to remove 
these difficulties by following not routine but the dictates of 
thought, and study and love of the little ones. 



There is an excellent though condensed account of the Port- Royalists 
under "Jansenists" in Sonnenschein's Cydopcedia of Education. In 
vol. ij, of Charles Beard's Port-Royal, (2 vols., 1861) there is a chapter 
on the Little Schools. The most pleasing account I have seen in 
English of the Port- Royalists (without reference to education) is in Sir 
Jas. Stephen's Essays on Ecclesiastical Biog)-aphy. In French the great 
work on the subject is Sainte-Beuve's Port-Royal, 5 vols. (71 ed., 6 vols.) 
The account of the Schools is in 4th bk., in vol. iij, of 1st ed. Very 
useful for studying the pedagogy of Port-Royal are V Education h Port- 
Royal by Felix Cadet (Hachette, 1887) and Les Pedagogues de Port- 
Royal, by I. Carre (Delagrave, 18S7). These last give extracts from 
the main writings on education by Arnauld, Nicole, Lancelot, Coustel, 
&c. The article, Port-Royal, in Buisson's D., is the " Introduction " to 
Carre's book. A 3-vol. ed. of RoUin's Traite was published (Paris, 
Didot) in 1872. The more interesting parts of this book are contained 



cavere oportebit, ne studia qui amare nondum potest oderit ; at amari- 
tudinem semel prseceptam etiam ultra rudes annos refonaidet. (Quint., 
lib. j, cap. I.)" 



196 THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 

Rollin, &c. 

in F. Cadet's Rollin: Traite des Etudes (Delagrave, 18S2). RoUin's 
work was at one time well-known in the English trans., and copies dF it 
are often to be found "second-hand." The best part comes last ; which 
may account for the neglect into which the book has fallen. The 
accounts of Port-Royal and of Rollin in G. Compayre's Histoiri 
Critique are very good parts of a very good book. Verin's iiude sur 
Lancelot I have not seen, and it is only too probable that I have not 
given to Lancelot the attention due to him. 



XII. 

SOME ENGLISH WRITERS BEFORE 
LOCKE. 



§ I. The beginning of the 17th century brought with it 
a change in the main direction of thought and interest. As 
we have seen, the i6th century adored Hterature and was 
thrown back on the remote past. Some of the great scholars 
like Sturm had indeed visions of literary works to be written, 
that would rival the old models on which they were 
fashioned ; but whether they hoped or not to bring back 
the Golden Age all the scholars of the Renascence thought 
of it as having been. With the change of century, however, a 
new conception came into men's minds. Might not this 
worship of the old writers after all be somewhat of a 
superstition? The languages in which they wrote were 
beautiful languages, no doubt, but they were ill adapted to 
express the ideas and wants of the modern world. As for 
the substance of these old writings, this did not satisfy the 
cravings of men's minds. It left unsolved all the main 
problems of existence, and offered for knowledge mere 
speculations or poetic fancies or pohshed rhetoric. Man 
needed to understand his position with regard to God and 
to Nature ; but on both of these topics the classics were 
either silent or misleading. Revelation had supplied what 



198 WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 

Birth of Realism. 

the classics could not give concerning man's relation to God; 
but nothing had as yet thrown light on his relation to Nature. 
And yet with his material body and animal life he could 
not but see how close that relation was, and could not but 
wish that something about it might be knaivn, not simply 
guessed or feigned. Hence the demand for r^a/ knowledge, 
that is, a knowledge of the facts of the universe as distinct 
from the knowledge of what men have thought and said. 
We have heard of the mathematician who put down Paradise 
Lost with the remark that it seemed to him a poor book, for 
it did not prove anything ; and it was just in this spirit that 
the new school of thinkers, the Realists, looked upon the 
classics. They wanted to know Nature's laws : and words 
which did not convey such knowledge seemed to them of 
little value. 

§ 2. Here was a tremendous revolution from the mode 
of thought prevalent in the Renascence. No longer was 
the Golden Age in the past. In science the Golden Age 
must always be in the future. Scientific men start with what 
has been discovered and add to it. Every discovery passes 
into the common stock of knowledge, and becomes the 
property of everyone who knows it just as much as of the 
discoverer. Harvey had no more property in the circulation 
of the'blood, Newton and Leibnitz no more property in the 
Differential Calculus than Columbus in the Continent of 
America ; indeed not so much, for Columbus gained some 
exclusive rights in America, but Harvey gained none over 
the blood. 

So we see that whereas the literary spirit made the 
dominant minds reverence the past, the scientific spirit led 
them to despise the past; and whereas the literary spirit 
raised the value of words and led to the study of celebrated 



WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 199 

Realist Leaders not schoolmasters. 

writings, the scientific spirit was totally careless about words 
and prized only physical truths which were entirely in- 
dependent of words. Again, the hterary spirit naturally 
favoured the principle of authority, for its oracles had already 
spoken : the scientific spirit set aside all authority and 
accepted nothing that did not of itself satisfy the reason. 
(Compare Comenius, supra p. 152.) 

§ 3. The first great leader in this revolution was an 
Englishman, Francis Bacon. But the school-room felt his 
influence only through those who learnt from him; and among 
educational reformers, the chief advocates of realism have 
been found on the Continent, e.g., Ratke and Comenius.* 
But the desire to learn by " things, not words " affected the 
minds of many English writers on education, and we find 
this spirit showing itself even in Milton and Locke, and far 
more clearly in some writers less known to fame. 

§ 4. There is a wide distinction in educational writers 
between those who were schoolmasters and those who were 
not. Schoolmasters have to come to terms with what exists 
and to make a livelihood by it. So they are conservatives 
by position, and rarely get beyond an attempt at showing 
how that which is now done badly might be done well. 
Suggestions of radical change usually come from those who 
never belonged to the class of teachers, or who, not without 
disgust, have left it. 

Among English schoolmasters of the olden times the chief 
writers I have met with besides Mulcaster are John Brinsley 
the elder, and Charles Hoole. 

* Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel weie also in this sense realists, 
but they held that the educational value of knowledge lay not in itself, 
but only in so far as it was an instrument for developing the faculties oJ 
the mind. 



200 ^ WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 

John Brinsley. Charles Hoole. 

§ 5. John Brinsley the elder, a Puritan schoolmaster at 
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, a brother-in-law of Bishop Hall's, and 
father of John Brinsley the younger who became a leading 
Puritan minister and author, was a veritable reformer, bu«. 
only with reference to methods. His most interesting 
books are Ludus Literarius or the Grammar Schoole, 1 6 1 2 
(written after 20 years' experience in teaching, as we learn 
from the Consolation, p. 45), and A Consolation for our 
Grammar Schooles : or a faithfull and most co7nfortahle in- 
couragement for laying of a sure foundation of all good learn- 
ing in our schooles and for prosperous building thereupon, 
1622. The first of these, when reprinted, as it is sure to 
be, will always secure for its author the notice and the 
gratitude of students of the history of our education ; for in 
this book he tells us not only what should be done in the 
school-room, but also what was done. In a dialogue with 
the ordinary schoolmaster the reformer draws to light the 
usual practice, criticizes it, and suggests improvements. 

§ 6. In Brinsley we get no hint of realism ; but by 
the middle of the sixteen hundreds we find the realistic 
spirit is felt even by a schoolmaster, Charles Hoole,* who 
was a kinsman of Bishop Sanderson, the Casuist, and was 
master first of the Grammar School at Rotherham, then of a 
private Grammar School in London, published besides a 
number of school books, a translation of the Orbis Fictus {da.te. 
of preface, January, 1658), and also "ANew Discovery of the 
old art of teaching schoole . . . pubhshed for the general 



* Henry Barnard {English Pedagogy, second series, p. 192), speaks of 
Hoole as " one of the pioneer educators of his century. " According to 
Barnard he was born at Wakefield, in 1610, and died in 1666, rector of 
"Stock Billerica" (perhaps Stock with Billericay), in Essex. 



WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 20I 

Hoole's Realism. 

profit, especially of young Schoolemasters " (date of preface, 
December, 1659). In these books we find that Hoole 
succeeded even in the school-room in keeping his mind open. 
He complains of the neglect of English, and evidently in 
theory at least went a long way with the realistic reformers. 
"Comenius," he says, "hath proceeded (as Nature itself doth) 
in an orderly way, first to exercise the senses well by pre- 
senting their objects to them, and then to fasten upon the 
intellect by impressing the first notions of things upon it and 
linking them one to another by a rational discourse ; 
whereas indeed we generally, missing this way, do teach 
children as we do parrots to speak they know not what, nay, 
which is worse, we taking the way of teaching little ones by 
grammar only, at the first do puzzle their imaginations with 
abstractive terms and secondary intentions, which, till they 
be somewhat acquainted with things, and the words belong- 
ing to them in the language which they learn, they cannot 
apprehend what they mean. And this I guess to be the 
reason why many greater persons do resolve sometimes not 
to put a child to school till he be at least eleven or twelve 
years of age . . . You then, that have the care of 
little children, do not too much trouble their thoughts and 
clog their memories with bare grammar rudiments, which to 
them are harsh in getting, and fluid in retaining ; because 
indeed to them they signifie nothing but a meer swimming 
notion of a general term, which they know not what it 
meaneth till they comprehend all particulars : but by this 
[i.e., the Ord/s jP.] or the like subsidiarie inform them first 
with some knowledge of things and words wherewith to 
express them ; and then their rules of speaking will be 
better understood and more firmly kept in mind. Else how 
should a child conceive what a rule meaneth when he neither 



202 WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 

Art of teaching. Abraham Cowley. 

knoweth what the Latine word importeth, nor what manner 
of thing it is which is signified to him in his own native 
language which is given him thereby to understand the rule? 
for rules consisting of generaHties are dehvered (as I may 
say) at a third hand, presuming first the things and then the 
words to be already apprehended touching which tl^ey are 
made." This subject Hoole wisely commends to the con- 
sideration of teachers, "it being the very basis of our profession 
to search into the way of childreti's taking hold by little and 
little of what we teach them, that so we may apply ourselves 
to their reach." (Preface to trans, of Orbis Fictus.) 

§ 7. " Good Lord ! how many good and clear wits of 
children be now-a-days perished by ignorant schoolmasters !" 
So said Sir Thomas Elyot in his Governor in 1531, and the 
complaint would not have been out of date in the 17th 
century, possibly not in the 19th. In the sixteen hundreds 
we certainly find little advance in practice, though in theory 
many bold projects were advanced, some of which pointed 
to the study of things, to the training of the hand, and even 
to observation of the " educands." 

§ 8. The poet Cowley's "proposition for the advance- 
ment of experimental philosophy " is a scheme of a college 
near London to which is to be attached a school of 200 
boys. " And because it is deplorable to consider the loss 
which children make of their time at most schools, employ- 
ing or rather casting away six or seven years in the learning 
of words only, and that too very imperfectly ; that a method 
be here established for the infusing knowledge and language 
at the same time, [Is this an echo of Comenius ?] and that 
this may be their apprenticeship in Natural Philosophy."* 

* A very interesting suggestion of Cowley's is that another house 
be built for poor men's sons who show ability. These shall be brought 



WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. -203 

Authors and schoolmasters. J. Dury. 

§ 9. Rarely indeed have those who either theoretically or 
practically have made a study of education ever acquired 
sufficient literary skill to catch the ear of the public or (what 
is at least as difficult) the ear of the teaching body. And 
among the eminent writers who have spoken on education, 
as Rabelais, Montaigne, Milton, Locke, Rousseau, Herbert 
Spencer, we cannot find one who has given to it more than 
passing, if not accidental, attention. Schoolmasters are, as I 
said, conservative, at least in the school-room ; and moreover, 
they seldom find the necessary time, money, or inclination 
for publishing on the work of their calling. The current 
thought at any period must then be gathered from books 
only to be found in our great libraries, books in which 
writers now long forgotten give hints of what was wanted 
out of the school-room and grumble at what went on in it. 

§ 10. One of the most original of these writers that have 
come in my way is John Dury, a Puritan, who was at one 
time Chaplain to the English Company of Merchants at 
Elbing, and laboured with Comenius and Hartlib to promote 
unity among the various Christian bodies of the reformed 
faith (see Masson's Life of Milton, vol. iii). About r 649 
Dury published The Reformed Schooleyi\i\'cki gives the scheme 
of an association for the purpose of educating a number of 
boys and girls " in a Christian way." 

§ II. That Dury was not himself a schoolmaster is plain 
from the first of his "rules of education." "The chief rule of 
the whole work is that nothing be made tedious and grievous 
10 the children, but all the toilsomeness of their business 

up " with the same conveniences that are enjoyed even by rich men' 
children (though they maintain the fewer for that cause), there being 
nothing of eminent and illustrious to be expected from a low, sordid, 
and hospital-like education." 



204 WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 

Disorderly use of our natural faculties. 

the Governor and Ushers are to take upon themselves; that 
by diligence and industry all things may be so prepared, 
methodized and ordered for their apprehension, that this 
work may unto them be as a delightful recreation by the 
variety and easiness thereof." 

§ 12. "The things to be looked unto in the care of 
their education," he enumerates in the order of importance : 
" I. Their advancement in piety; 2. The preservation of their 
health ; 3. The forming of their manners ; 4. Their pro- 
ficiency in learning" (p. 24). "Godliness and bodily 
health are absolutely necessary," says Dury ; " the one for 
spiritual and the other for their temporal felicitie " (p. 31): so 
great care is to be taken in " exercising their bodies in 
husbandry or manufactures or military employments."* 

§ 13. About instruction we find the usual complaints 
which like " mother's truth keep constant youth." " Child- 
ren," says Dury, "are taught to read authors and learn words 
and sentences before they can have any notion of the things 
signified by those words and sentences or of the author's 
strain and wit in setting them together ; and they are made 
to learn by heart the generall rules, sentences and precepts 
of Arts before they are furnished with any matter whereunto 
to apply those rules and precepts " (p. 38). Dury would 
entirely sweep away the old routine, and in all instruction 
he would keep in view the following end : " the true end of 
all human learning is to supply in ourselves and others the 
defects which proceed from our ignorance of the nature and 

• It would seem as if these Puritans were more active in body than 
in mind : even the seniors, like the children at Port-Royal, tombent dans 
la nonchalance. Dury has to lay it down that " the Governour and 
Ushers and Steward if they be in health should not go to bed till ten." 
(P- 30.) 



WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 20$ 

Dury's watch simile. 

use of the creatures, and the disorderliness of our natural 
faculties in using them and reflecting upon them " (p. 41). 

§ 14. "Our natural faculties" — here Dury struck a new 
note, which has now become the keynote in the science of 
education. He enforces his point with the following 
ingenious illustration : — " As in a watch one wheel rightly 
set doth with its teeth take hold of another and sets tliat 
a-work towards a third ; and so all move one by another 
when they are in their right places for the end for which the 
watch is made ; so is it with the faculties of the human 
nature being rightly ordered to the ends for which God 
hath created them. But contrariwise, if the wheels be not 
rightly set, or the watch not duly wound up, it is useless to 
him that hath it. And so it is with the faculties of Man ; 
if his wheels be not rightly ordered and wound up by the 
ends of sciences in their subordination leading him to 
employ the same according to his capacity to make use of 
the creatures for that whereunto God hath made them, he 
becomes .not only useless, but even a burthen and hurtful 
unto himself and others by the misusing of them " (p. 43). 

§ 15. "As in Nature sense is the servant of imagination ; 
imagination of memory ; memory of reason ; so in teaching 
arts and sciences we must set these faculties a-work in this 
order towards their proper objects in everything which is to 
be taught. Whence this will follow, that as the faculties of 
Man's soul naturally perfect each other by their mutual 
subordination ; so the Arts which perfect those faculties 
should be gradually suggested : and the objects wherewith 
the faculties are to be conversant according to the rules of 
Art should be offered in that order which is answerable to 
their proper ends and uses and not otherwise." 

§ 16. In this and much else that Dury says we see a firm 



206 WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 

Senses, ist ; imagination, 2nd ; memory, 3rd. 

grasp of the principle that the instruction given should be 
regulated by the gradual development of the learner's 
faculties. The three sources of our knowledge, says he, are 
— 1. Sense ; 2. Tradition ; 3. Reason ; and Sense comes 
first. " Art or sciences which may be learnt by mere sense 
should not be learnt any other way." "As children's 
faculties break forth in them by degrees to be vigorous with 
their years and the growth of their bodies, so they are to be 
filled with objects whereof they are capable, and plied with 
arts ; whence followeth that while children are not capable of 
the acts of reasoning, the method of filling their senses and 
imaginations with outward objects should be plied. Nor is 
their memory at this time to be charged further with any 
objects than their imagination rightly ordered and fixed doth 
of itself impress the same upon them," After speaking of 
the common abuse of general rules, he says : " So far as 
those faculties (viz., sense, imagination, and memory) are 
started with matters of observation, so far rules may be 
given to direct the mind in the use of the same, and no 
further." " The arts and sciences which lead us to reflect 
upon the use of our own faculties are not to be taught till 
we are fully acquainted with their proper objects, and the 
direct acts of the faculties about them." So " it is a very 
absurd and preposterous course to teach Logick and 
Metaphysicks before or with other Humane Sciences which 
depend more upon Sense and Imagination than reasoning" 

(p. 46). 

§ 17. In all this it seems to me that the worthy Puritan, 
of whom nobody but Dr. Barnard and Professor Masson 
has ever heard, has truly done more to lay a foundation for 
the art of teaching than his famous contemporaries Milton 
and Locke. 



WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 20/ 

Petty's battlefield simile. 

§ 1 8. Another writer of that day better known than 
Dury and with far more power of expression was Sir 
William Petty. He is the '' W.P.," who in an Episde "to 
his honoured friend Master Samuel Hartlib," set down his 
" thoughts concerning the advancement of real learning " 
(1647). This letter is to be shown only " to those few that 
are Reall Friends to the Designe of Realities."* 

§ 19. Petty sees the need of intercommunication of 
those who wish to advance any art or science. He 
complains that " the wits and endeavours of the world are 
as so many scattered coals or fire-brands, which for want of 
union are soon quenched, whereas being but laid together 
they would yield a comfortable light and heat." This is a 
thought which may well be applied to the bringing up of 
the young ; and the following passage might have been 
written to secure a training for teachers : " Methinks the 
present condition of men is like a field where a battle hath 
been lately fought, where we may see many legs and arms 
and eyes lying here and there, which for want of a union 
and a soul to quicken and enliven them are good for 
nothing but to feed ravens and infect the air. So we see 
m.any wits and ingenuities lying scattered up and down the 



* It is a sign of the failure of all attempts to establish educational 
science in England that though the meaning of "real" and "realities" 
which connected them with res seemed established in the sixteen hundreds, 
our language soon lost it again. According to a writer in Meyer's 
Conversations Lexicon (first edition) "reales " in this sense occurs first 
in Taubmann, 1614. Whether this is correct or not it was certainly 
about this time that there arose a contest between Humanismus and 
Realismus, a contest now at its height in the Gymnasiemxi^ Realschulen 
of Germany. For a discussion of it, see M. Arnold's " Literature and 
Science," referrevJ to above (p. 154). 



208 WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 

Petty's realism. 

world, whereof some are now labouring to do what is 
already done, and puzzling themselves to re-invent what is 
already invented. Others we see quite stuck fast in diffi- 
culties for want of a few directions which some other man 
(might he be met withal) both could and would most easily 
give him." I wonder how many young teachers are now 
wasting their own and their pupils' time in this awkward 
predicament. 

§ 20. "As for . . . education," says Petty, "we 
cannot but hope that those who make it their trade will 
supply it and render the idea thereof much more perfect." 
His own contributions to the more perfect idea consist 
mainly in making the study of " realities " precede literature, 
and thus announcing the principle which in later times has 
led to the introduction of " object lessons." The Baconians 
thought that the good time was at hand, and that they had 
found the right road at last. By experiments they would 
learn to interpret Nature. After scheming a " Gymnasium, 
Mechanicum, or College of Tradesmen," Petty says, " What 
experiments and stuff would all those shops and operations 
afford to active and philosophical heads, out of which to 
extract that interpretation of nature whereof there is so 
little, and that so bad, as yet extant in the world !"* And 
this study of things was to affect the work of the school-room, 
and redeem it from the dismal state into which it was 
fallen. "As for the studies to which children are now- 
a-days put," says Petty, " they are altogether unfit for want 
of judgment which is but weak in them, and also for want 
of will, which is sufficiently seen ... by the difficulty 

• Many of Petty's proposals are now realized in the South Kensington 
Museum. 



WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 209 

Cultivate observation. 



of keeping them at schools and the punishment they will 
endure rather than be altogether debarred from the 
pleasure which they take in things." 

§ 21. The grand reform required is thus set forth ; 
•'Since few children have need of reading before they know 
or can be acquainted with the things they read of; or of 
writing before their thoughts are worth the recording or they 
are able to put them into any form (which we call 
inditing) ; much less of learning languages when there be 
books enough for their present use in their own mother- 
tongue ; our opinion is that those things being withal 
somewhat above their capacity (as being to be attained by 
judgment which is weakest in children) be deferred awhile, 
and others more needful for them, such as are in the order of 
Nature before those afore-mentioned, and are attainable by 
the help of memory which is either most strong or unpreoc- 
cupied in children, be studied before them. We wish, 
therefore, that the educands be taught to observe and 
remember all sensible objects and actions, whether they be 
natural or artificial, which the educators must upon all 
occasions expound unto them." 

§ 22. In proposing this great change Petty was in- 
'fluenced not merely by his own delight in the study of 
things but by something far more important for education, 
by observation of the children themselves. This study 
of things instead of " a rabble of words " would be " more 
easy and pleasant to the young as the more suitable to the 
natural propensions we observe in them. For we see 
children do delight in drums, pipes, fiddles, guns made of 
elder sticks, and bellows' noses, piped keys, &c., painting 
flags and ensigns with elderberries and cornpoppy, making 
ships with paper, and setting even nut-shells a-swimming, 



2IO WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 

Petty on children's activities. 

handling the tools of workmen as soon as they turn their 
backs and trying to work themselves ; fishing, fowling, hunting, 
setting springes and traps for birds and other animals, making 
pictures in their writing-books, making tops, gigs and 
whirligigs, gilting balls, practising divers juggling tricks upon 
the cards, &c., with a million more besides. And for the 
females they will be making pies with clay, making their 
babies' clothes and dressing them therewith ; they will spit 
leaves on sticks as if they were roasting meat; they will 
imitate all the talk and actions which they observe in their 
mother and her gossips, and punctually act the comedy or 
the tragedy (I know not whether to call it) of a woman's 
lying-in. By all which it is most evident that children do 
most naturally delight in things and are most capable of 
learning them, having quick senses to receive them and 
unpreoccupied memories to retain them " {ad f.). 

§ 23. In these writers, Dury and Petty, we find a 
wonderful advance in the theory of instruction. Children 
are to be taught about things and this because their inward 
constitution determines them towards things. Moreover 
the subjects of instruction are to be graduated to accord 
with the development of the learner's faculties. The giving 
of rules and incamprehensible statements that will come in ' 
useful at a future stage is entirely forbidden. All this is 
excellent, and greatly have children suffered, greatly do they 
suffer still, from their teachers' neglect of it. There seems 
to me to have been no important advance on the thought of 
these men till Pestalozzi and Froebel fixed their attention on 
the mind of the child, and valued things not in themselves but 
simply as the means best fitted for drawing out the child's 
self-activity. 

§ 24. In several other matters we find Sir William 



WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 211 

Hand-work. Education for all. Bellers. 

Petty's recommendations in advance of the practice of his 
own time and ours. He advises " that the business of 
olucation be not (as now) committed to the worst and 
unworthiest of men [here at least we have improved] but 
that it be seriously studied and practised by the best and 
abler persons." To this standard we have not yet attained. 

§ 25. Handwork is to be practised, but its educational 
value is not clearly perceived. " All children, though of the 
highest rank, are to be taught some gentle manufacture in 
their minority." Ergastula Literaria, literary workhouses, 
are to be instituted where children may be taught as well to 
do something towards their living as to read and write.* 

§ 26. Education was to be universal, but chiefly with 
the object of bringing to the front the clever sons of poor 
parents. The rule he would lay down is " that all children of 
above seven years old may be presented to this kind of 
education, none being to be excluded by reason of the 
poverty and unability of their parents, for hereby it hath come 
to pass that many are now holding the plough which might 
have been made fit to steer the state."t 

*■ Later in the century Locke recommended that " working schools 
should be set up in every parish," {see Fox-Bourne's Locke, or Cambridge 
edition of the Thoughts c. Ed., App. A, p. 189). The Quakers seem to 
have early taken up "industrious education." John Bellers, whose 
Proposals for Raising a College of Industry ( 1696) was reprinted by Robt. 
Owen, has some very good notions. After advising that boys and girls 
be taught to knit, spift, &c., and the bigger boys turning, &c., he says, 
"Thus the Hand employed brings Profit, the Reason used in it makes 
wise, and the Will subdued makes them good " {^Proposals, p. 18). Years 
afterwards in a Letter to the Yearly Meeting (dated 1723), he says, " It 
may be observed that some of the Boys in Friends' Workhouse in 
Clerkenwell by their present employment of spinning are capable to 
earn their own living." 

t Petty does not lose sight of the body. The " educands " are to 



212 WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 

Milton and School-Reform. 

§ 27. From these enthusiasts for realities we find a 
change when we turn to their contemporary, a schoolmaster 
and author of a Latin Accidence, who was perhaps the 
most notable Englishman who ever kept a school or pub- 
lished a school-book. 

§ 28. Milton was not only a great poet: he was also a great 
scholar. Everything he said or wrote bore traces of his 
learning. The world of books then rather than the world 
of the senses is his world. He has benefited as he says 
" among old renowned authors " and " his inclination leads 
him not " to read modern Jam/as and Didactics, or 
apparently the writings of any of his contemporaries includ- 
ing those of his great countryman. Bacon. But, as 
Professor Laurie reminds us, no man, not even a Milton, 
however he may ignore the originators of ideas can keep 
himself outside the influence of the ideas themselves when 
they are in the air; and so we find Milton using his 



"use such exercises whether in work or for recreation as tend to the 
health, agility, and strength of their bodies." 

I have quoted Petty from the very valuable collection of English 
writings on Education reprinted in Henry Barnard's English Pedagogy, 
2 vols. Petty is in Vol. I. In this vol. we have plenty of evidence of 
the working of the Baconian spirit ; e.g., we find Sir Matthew Hale in 
a Litter of Advice to his Grandchildren, written in 1678, saying that there 
is little use or improvement in " notional spallations in logic or 
philosophy delivered by others ; the rather because bare speculations 
and notions have little experience and external observation to confirm 
them, and they rarely fix the minds especially of young men. But that 
part of philosophy that is real may be improved and confirmed by daily 
observation, and is more stable and yet more certain and delightful, and 
goes along with a n^an all his life, whatever employment or profession 
he undertakes." 



WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 21 3 

M. as spokesman of Christian Realists. 

incomparable power of expression in the service of the 
Realists. 

§ 29. But brief he endeavours to be, and paying the 
Horatian penalty he becomes obscure. In the " few 
observations which flowered off and were the burnishing 
of many studious and contemplative years," Milton touches 
only on the bringing up of gentlemen's sons between the 
ages of 12 and 21, and his suggestions do not, like those of 
Comenius, deal with the education of the people, or of both 
sexes.* This limit of age, sex, and station deprives Milton's 
plan of much of its interest, as the absence of detail deprives 
it of much of its value. 

§ 30. Still, we find in the Tractate a very great advance 
on the ideas current at the Renascence. Learning is no 
longer the aim of education but is regarded simply as a 
means. No finer expression has been given in our litera- 
ture to the main thesis of the Christian and of the Realist 
and to the Realist's contempt of" verbalism, than this : " The 
end of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by 
regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to 
love Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him, as we may the 
nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being 
united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest 
perfection. But because our understanding cannot in this 
body found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly 
to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly 
conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same 
method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching. 
And seeing every Nation affords not experience and tradition 

* " In this respect," says Professor Masson, " the passion and the 
projects of Comenius were a world wider than Milton's." (Z. of M, 
iij, P- 237-) 



214 WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 

Language an instrument. Object of education. 

enough for all kind of learning, therefore we are chiefly taught 
the languages of those people who have at any time been 
most industrious after wisdom ; so that language is but the 
instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. 
And though a linguist should pride himself to have all the 
tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not 
studied the solid things in them as well as the words and 
lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned 
man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his 
mother-dialect only," 

§ 31. The several propositions here implied have thus 
been "disentangled" by Professor Laurie (yb//^ Milton in 
Addresses^ Sic, p. 167). 

1. The aim of education is the knowledge of God and 
likeness to God. 

2. Likeness to God we attain by possessing our souls of 
true virtue and by the Heavenly Grace of Faith. 

3. Knowledge of God we attain by the study of the 
visible things of God. 

4. Teaching then has for its aim this knowledge. 

5. Language is merely an instrument or vehicle for the 
knowledge of things. 

6. The linguist may be less learned {i.e., educated) in the 
tnie sense than a man who can make good use of his 
mother-tongue though he knows no other. 

§ 32. Elsewhere, Milton gives his idea of "a complete 
and generous education;" it "fits a man to perform justly, 
skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices both private and 
public of Peace and War." (Browning's edition, p. 8.) 
Here and indeed in all that Milton says we feel that " the 
noble moral glow that pervades the Tractate on Education, 
the mood of magnanimity in which it is conceived and written, 



WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 21$ 

M. for barrack life and Verbal Realism. 

and the faith it inculcates in the powers of the young human 
spirit, if rightly nurtured and directed, are merits everlasting." 
(Masson iij, p. 252.) 

§ 33. But in this moral glow and in an intense hatred of 
verbalism lie as it seems to me the chief merits of the 
Tractate. The practical suggestions are either incompre- 
hensible or of doubtful wisdom. The reforming of educa- 
tion was, as Milton says, one of the greatest and noblest 
designs that could be thought on, but he does not take the 
right road when he proposes for every city in England a 
joint school and university for about 120 boarders. The 
advice to keep boys between 12 and 21 in this barrack life 
I consider, with Professor Laurie, to be " fundamentally 
unsound ; " and the project of uniting the military training 
of Sparta with the humanistic training of Athens seems to 
me a pure chimsera. 

§ 34. When we come to instruction we find that Milton 
after announcing the distinctive principle of the Realists 
proves to be himself the last survivor of the Verbal Realists. 
(See supra, p. 25). No doubt 

" His daily teachers had been woods and rills," 

but his thoughts had been even more in his books ; and for 
the young he sketches out a purely bookish curriculum. 
The young are to learn about things, but they are to learn 
through books ; and the only books to which Milton 
attaches importance are written in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. 
He held, probably with good reason, that far too much 
time " is now bestowed in pure trifling at grammar and 
sophistry." "We do amiss," he says, "to spend 7 or 8 
years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin 
and Greek as might be learned otherwise easily and delight- 



2l6 WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 

Milton succeeded as man not master. 

fully m one year." Without an explanation of the 
" otherwise " this statement is a truism, and what Milton 
says further hardly amounts to an explanation. His plan, 
if plan it can be called, is as follows : " If after some pre- 
paratory grounds of speech by their certain forms got into 
memory, the boys were led to the praxis thereof in some 
chosen short book lessoned throughly to them, they might 
then proceed to learn the substance of good things and arts 
in due order, which would bring the whole language quickly 
into their power. This," adds Milton, " I take to be the 
most rational and most profitable way of learning languages." 
It is, however, not the most intelligible. 

§ 35. "I doubt not but ye shall have more ado to drive 
our dullest and laziest youth, our stocks and stubbs, from 
the infinite desire of such a happy nurture than we have 
now to hale and drag our choicest and hopefullest wits to 
that asinine feast of sow thistles and brambles which is 
commonly set before them as all the food and entertainment 
of their tenderest and most docible age." We cannot but 
wonder whether this belief survived the experience of " the 
pretty garden-house in Aldersgate." From the little we are 
told by his nephew and old pupil Edward Phillips we 
should infer that Milton was not unsuccessful as a school- 
master. In this we have a striking proof how much more 
important is the teacher than the teaching. A character 
such as Milton's in which we find the noblest aims 
united with untiring energy in pursuit of them could not 
but dominate the impressionable minds of young people 
brought under its influence. But whatever success he 
met with could not have been due to the things he taught 
nor to his method in teaching them. In spite of the " moral 
glow" about his recommendations they are "not a bow for 



WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 217 

He did not advance Science of Education. 

every [or any] man to shoot in that counts himself a 
teacher." 

§ 36. Nor did he do much for the science of education. 
His scheme is vitiated, as Mark Pattison says, by " the 
information fallacy." In the literary instruction there is no 
thought of training the faculties of all or the special 
faculties of the individual. *' It requires much observation 
of young minds to discover that the rapid inculcation of 
unassimilable information stupefies the faculties instead of 
training them," says Pattison ; and Milton absorbed by 
his own thoughts and the thoughts of the ancients did not 
observe the minds of the young, and knew little of the 
powers of any mind but his own. 

For information the youths are not required to observe 
for themselves but are to be taught " a general compact of 
physicks." " Also in course might be read to them out of 
some not tedious writer the Institution of Physick ; that 
they may know the tempers, the humours, the seasons, and 
how to manage a crudity." 

§ 37. Even the study of the classics is advocated by 
Milton on false grounds. If, like the Port-Royalists, he had 
recommended the study of the classical authors for the 
sake of pure Latin and Greek or as models of literary 
style, the means would have been suited to the end ; 
but it was very different when he directed boys to study 
Virgil and Columella in order to learn about bees and 
farming. In after-life they would find these authorities a 
little out of date ; and if they ever attempted to improve 
tillage, " to recover the bad soil and to remedy the waste 
that is made of good, which was one of Hercules's praises," 
they would have found a knowledge of the methods of 
Hercules about as useful as of the methods of the Romans. 



2l8 WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 

Milton an educator of mankind. 

§ 38. Milton was then a reformer " for his own hand ; ' 
and notwithstanding his moral and intellectual elevation 
and his superb power of rhetoric, he seems to me a less 
useful writer on education than the humble Puritans whom 
he probably would not deign to read. In his haughty self- 
reliance, he, like Carlyle with whom Seeley has well 
compared him (^Lectures and Addresses : Milt07i), addressed 
his contemporaries de haiit en bas, and though ready to 
teach could learn only among the old renowned authors 
with whom he associated himself and we associate him. 

§ 39. Judged from our present standpoint the Tractate is 
found with many weaknesses to be strong in this, that it co- 
ordinates physical, moral, mental and aesthetic training. 

§ 40. But nothing of Milton's can be judged by our 
ordinary canons. He soars far above them and raises us 
with him " to mysterious altitudes above the earth " {supra, 
p. 153, note). Whatever we little people may say about the 
suggestions of the Tractate, Milton will remain one of the 
great educators of mankind.* 



* Of Education. To Master Samuel HartUb ("the Tractate " as it 
is usually called), was published by Milton first in 1644, and again in 
1673. See Oscar Browning's edition, Cambridge Univ. Press. 



XIII. 
LOCKE. 

(1632-1704). 

§ I. When an English University established an exami- 
nation for future teachers,* the " special subjects " first set 
were " Locke and Dr. Arnold. " The selection seems to ine 
a very happy one. Arnold greatly affected the spirit and 
even the organization of our public schools at a time when 
the old schools were about to have new life infused into 
them, and when new schools were to be started on the 
model of the old. He is perhaps the greatest educator of 
the English type, i.e., the greatest educator who had 
accepted the system handed down to him and tried to 
make the best of it. Locke on the other hand, whose 
reputation is more European than English, belongs rather 
to the continental type. Like his disciple Rousseau and 
like Rousseau's disciples the French Revolutionists, Locke 
refused the traditional system and appealed from tradition 
and authority to reason. We English revere Arnold, but 
so long as the history of education continues to be written, 
as it has been written hitherto, on the Continent, the only 
Englishman celebrated in it will be as now not the great 
schoolmaster but the great philosopher. 

• The University of Cambridge. The first examination ■wa.i in 
June, 1880. 



220 LOCKE. 

Locke's two main characteristics. 

§ 2. In order to understand Locke we must always 
bear in mind what I may call his two main characteristics; 
I St, his craving to know and to speak the truth an'i the 
whole truth in everything, truth not for a purpose bat for 
itself* ; 2nd, his perfect trust in the reason as the guide, 
the only guide, to truth, t 

§ 3. I St. Those who have not reflected much on the sub- 
ject will naturally suppose that the desire to know the truth 
is common to all men, and the desire to speak the truth 
common to most. But this is very far from being the case. 
If we had any earnest desire for truth we should examine 
things carefully before we admitted them as truths; in 
other words our opinions would be the growth of long and 
energetic thought. But instead of this they are formed for 
the most part quite carelessly and at haphazard^ and we 
value them not on account of their supposed agreement 
with fact but because though " poor things " they are " our 
own " or those of our sect or party. Locke on the other 



* " Believe it, my good friend, to love truth for truth's sake is the 
principal part of human perfection in this world and the seed-plot of all 
other virtues." L. to Bolde, quoted by Fowler, Locke ^ p. 120. This 
shows us that according to Locke "the principal part of human 
perfection " is to be found in the intellect. 

t Lady Masham seems to consider these two characteristics identical. 
She wrote to Leclerc of Locke after his death : " He was always, in the 
greatest and in the smallest affairs of human life, as well as in specula- 
tive opinions, disposed to follow reason, whosoever it were that 
suf^ges'ed it ; he being ever a faithful servant, I had almost said a slave, 
to truth ; never abandoning her for anything else, and following her 
fot her own sake purely " (quoted by Fox-Bourne). But it is one 
thing to desire truth, and another to think one's own reasoning power 
the sole means of obtaining it. 



LOCKE. 22 1 

1st Truth for itself. 2nd Reason for Truth. 

hand was always endeavouring to get at the truth for its 
own sake. This separated him from men in general. And 
he brought great powers of mind to bear on the investiga- 
tion. This raised him above them. 

§ 4. 2nd. Locke's second characteristic was his entire 
reliance on the guidance of reason. "The faculty of 
reasoning," says he, " seldom or never deceives those who 
trust to it." Elsewhere, borrowing a metaphor from 
Solomon (Prov. xx, 27), he speaks of this faculty as "the 
candle of the Lord set up by Himself in men's minds." 
(F. B. ij. 129). In a fine passage in the Conduct of the 
Understanding he calls it " the touchstone of truth " (§ iij, 
Fowler's edition, p. 10). He even goes so far in his 
correspondence with Molyneux as to maintain that intel- 
ligent honest men cannot possibly differ.* 

But if we consider.it from one point of view the treatise 
on the Co7iduct of the Under statidi7tg is itself a witness that 
human reason is a compass liable to incalculable variations 
and likely enough to shipwreck those who steer by it alone. 
In this book Locke shows us that to come to a true result 
the understanding (i) must be perfectly trained, (2) must 
not be affected by any feeling in favour of or against any 



• " I am far from imagining myself infallible ; but yet I should be 
loth to differ from any thinking man ; being fully persuaded there are 
very few things of pure speculation wherein two thinking men who 
impartially seek truth can differ if they give themselves the leisure to 
examine their hypotheses and understand one another" (L. to W. M., 
26 Dec, 1692). Again he writes : " I am persuaded that upon debate 
you and I cannot be of two opinions, nor I think any two men used to 
think with freedom, who really prefer truth to opiniatrety and a little 
foolish vain-glory of not having made a mistake" (L. to W. M., 
3 Sept., 1694). 



222 LOCKE. 

Locke's definition of knowledge. 

particular result, and (3) must have before it all the data 
necessary for forming a judgment. In practice these 
conditions are seldom (if ever) fulfilled ; and Locke himself, 
when he wants an instance of a mind that can acquiesce in 
the certainty of its conclusions, takes it from " angels 
and separate spirits who may be endowed with more com- 
prehensive faculties " than we are (C. of U. § iij, 3). 

§ 5. It seems to me then that Locke much exaggerates 
the power of the individual reason for getting at the truth. 
And to exaggerate the importance of one function of the 
mind is to unduly diminish the importance of the rest. 
Thus we find that in Locke's scheme of education little 
thought is taken for the play of the affections and feelings ; 
and as for the imagination it is treated merely as a source 
of mischief. 

§ 6. Locke, as it has often been pointed out, differs from 
the schoolmaster in making small account of the know- 
ledge to be acquired by those under education. But it has 
not been so often remarked that the fundamental difference 
is much deeper than this and lies in the conception of 
knowledge itself. With the ordinary schoolmaster the test 
of knowledge is the power of reproduction. Whatever 
pupils can reproduce with difficulty they know imperfectly ; 
whatever they can reproduce with ease they know thoroughly. 
But Locke's definition of knowledge confines it to a much 
smaller area. According to him knowledge is "the internal 
perception of the mind" (Locke to Stillingfleet v. F. B. ij, 
432). "Knowing is seemg; and if it be so, it is madness 
to persuade ourselves we do so by another man's eyes, let 
him use never so many words to tell us that what he asserts 
is very visible. Till we ourselves see it with our own eyes, 
and perceive it by our own understandings, we are as much 



LOCKE. 223 

Knowing without seeing. 



in the dark and as void of knowledge as before, let us believe 
any learned authors as much as we will " (C. of U. § 24).* 

§ 7. Here Locke makes no distinction between different 
classes of truths. But surely very important differences 
exist. 

About some physical facts our knowledge is at once 
most certain and most definite when we derive it through 
the evidence of our own senses. " Seeing is believing," says 
the proverb. It may be believing, but it is not knowing. 
That certainty which we call knowledge we often arrive at 
better by the testimony of others than by that of our 
own senses. 

Miss Martineau in her Autobiography tells us that as a 
child of ten she entirely and unaccountably failed to see a 
comet which was visible to all other people ; -but, although 
her own senses were at fault, the evidence for the comet 
was so conclusive that she may be said to have known 
there was a comet in the sky. 

* Compare Carlyle : — " Except thine own eye have got to see it, 
except thine own soul have victoriously struggled to clear vision and 
belief of it, what is the thing seen or the thing believed by another or 
by never so many others ? Alas, it is not thine, though thou look on 
it, brag about it, and bully and fight about it till thou die, striving to 
persuade thyself and all men how much it is thine 1 Not it is thine, but 
only a windy echo and tradition of it bedded [an echo bedded}'] in 
hypocrisy, ending sure enough in tragical futility is thine." Froude's 
Thos. Carlyle, ij, 10. Similarly Locke wrote to Bolde in 1699 : — " To 
be learned in the lump by other men's thoughts, and to be right by 
saying after others is much the easier and quieter way ; but how a 
rational man that should enquire and know for himself can content 
himself with a faith or religion taken upon trust, or with such a servile 
submission of his understanding as to admit all and nothing else but 
what fashion makes passable among men, is to me astonishing." 
Quoted by Fowler, Locke, p. 1 18. 



224 LOCKE. 

Discentem credere oportet. 

On sufficient evidence we can know anything, just as we 
know there is a great water-fall at Niagara though we may 
never have crossed the Atlantic, But we cannot be so cer- 
tain simply on the evidence of our senses. If we trusted 
entirely to them we might take the earth for a plane and 
"know" that the sun moved round it. 

§ 8. But Locke probably considers as the subject of know- 
ledge not so much physical facts as the great body of truths 
which are ascertained by the intellect. It is the eye of the 
mind by which alone knowledge is to be gained. Of these 
truths the purest specimens are the truths of geometry. It 
may be said that only those who have followed the proofs 
know that the area of the square on the side opposite the 
right angle in a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of 
the squares on the other sides. But even in pure reasoning 
like this, the tiro often seems to see what he does not really 
see ; and where his own reason brings him to a conclusion 
different from the one established he knows only that he is 
mistaken. 

§ 9. It must be admitted then that first-hand knowledge, 
knowledge derived from the vision of the eye or of the 
mind, is not the only knowledge the young require. 
Every learner must take things on trust, as even Lord 
Bacon admits. Discentem credere oportet. To use Locke's 
own words : — " I do not say, to be a good geographer that 
a man should visit every mountain, river, promontory, and 
creek upon the face of the earth, view the buildings and 
survey the land everywhere as if he were going to make a 
purchase " (C. of U., iij, adf.). So that even according to 
Locke's own shewing we must use the eyes of others as 
well as our own, and this is true not in geography only, but 
in all other branches of knowledge. 



LOCKE. 225 

L.'s "Knowledge" and the schoolmaster's. 

§ 10. But are we driven to the alternative of agreeing 
either with Locke or with the schoohnaster ? I do not see 
(hat we are. The thought which underhes Locke's system 
of education is this : true knowledge can be acquired only 
by the exercise of the reason : in childhood the reasoning 
power is not strong enough for the pursuit of knowledge : 
knowledge, therefore, is out of the question at that age, 
and the only thing to be thought of is the formation of 
habits. Opposed to this we have the schoolmaster's ideal 
which is governed by examinations. According to this ideal 
the object of the school course is to give certain "know- 
ledge," linguistic and other, and to fix it in the memory in 
such a manner that it can be displayed on the day of 
examination. " Knowledge " of this kind often makes no 
demand whatever on the reasoning faculty, or indeed on any 
faculty but that of remembering and reproducing what the 
learner has been told ; in extreme cases the memory of mere 
sounds or symbols suffices. 

But after all we are not compelled to choose between these 
two theories. Take, e.g., the subject which Locke has men- 
tioned, geography. The schoolmasters of the olden time 
began with the use of the globes, a plan which, by the way, 
Locke himself seems to have winked at. His disciple 
Molyneux tells him of the performances of the small 
Molyneux. When he was but just turned five he could 
read perfectly well, and on the globe could have traced out 
and pointed at all the noted ports, countries, and cities of 
the world, both land and sea ; by five and a half could 
perform many of the plainest problems on the globe, as the 
longitude and latitude, the Antipodes, the ^me with them 
and other countries, &c. (Molyneux to L., 24th August, 
1695.) Here we find a child brought up, without any 
Q 



226 LOCKE. 

"Knowledge" in Geography. 

protest from Locke, on mere examination knowledge, which 
according to Locke himself is not knowledge at all. It 
is strange that Locke did not at once point out to Moly- 
neux that the child was not really learning what the father 
supposed him to be learning. When the child turned over 
the plaster ball and found the word " Paris," the father 
no doubt attributed to the child much that was in his 
own mind only. To the child " the Globe " (as Rousseau 
afterwards said), was nothing but a plaster ball ; " Paris " 
was nothing but some letters marked on that ball. Come- 
nius had already got a notion how children may be given 
some knowledge of geography. " Children begm geo- 
graphy," said he, "when they get to understand what a hill, 
a valley, a field, a river, a village, a town is." {Supra, 
p. 145.) When this beginning has been made, geographical 
knowledge is at once possible to the child, and not 
before. 

Perfect knowledge in geography, as in most other things, 
is out of every one's reach. Nobody knows, e.g., all that 
could be known about Paris. The knowledge its inhabi- 
tants have of it is very various, but in all cases this know- 
ledge is far greater than that of a visitor. The visitor's 
knowledge again is far greater than that of strangers who 
have never seen Paris. Nobody, then, can know everything 
even about Paris ; but a child who knows what a large town 
is, and can fancy to himself a big town called Paris, which 
is the biggest and most important town in France has some 
knowledge about it. This must be maintained against 
Locke. Against the schoolmaster it may be pointed out 
that making an Eskimo say the words : — " Paris is the 
capital of France," would not be giving him any knowledge 
at all ; and the same may be said of many " lessons " in 



LOCKE. 227 

For children, health and habits. 

the school-room. If a common sailor were to teach an 
Eskimo English, he would very likely suppose that when he 
had taught the sounds " Paris is the capital of France," he 
had conveyed to his pupil all the ideas which those sounds 
suggested to his own mind. A common schoolmaster may 
fall into a similar error. 

§ II. In the most celebrated work which has been 
affected by the Thoughts of Locke, Rousseau's Einile, we 
find childhood treated in a manner altogether different from 
youth : the child's education is mainly physical, and 
instruction is not given till the age of twelve. Locke's 
system on first sight seems very different to this, but there 
is a deeper connection between the two than is usually 
observed. We have seen that Locke allowed nothing to be 
knowledge that was not acquired by the perception of the 
intellect. But in children the intellectual power is not yet 
developed ; so according to Locke knowledge properly so- 
called is not within their reach. What then can the 
educator do for them ? He can prepare them for the age 
of reason in two ways, by caring first for their physical health, 
second for the formation of good habits. 

§ 12. ist. On the Continent Locke has always been con- 
sidered one of the first advocates of physical education, and 
he does, it is true, give physical education the first place, a 
feature in his system, which we naturally connect with his 
study of medicine, and also with the trouble he had all his life 
with his own health. But care of the body, and especially 
bodily exercises, were always much thought of in this 
country, and the main writers on education before Locke, 
e.g.. Sir Thos. Elyot, Mulcaster, Milton, were very emphatic 
about physical training. 

In the autobiography of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, we 



228 LOCKE. 

Everything educative forms habits. 

may see what attention was paid in Locke's own century to 
this part of education.* 

§ 13. 2nd. "That, and that only, is educative which 
moulds forms or modifies the soul or mind." (Mark 
Pattison in Neiv Quarterly Magazine, January, 1880.) 

Here we have a proposition which is perhaps seldom 
denied, but very commonly ignored by those who bring 
up the young. But Locke seems to have been entirely 
posstssedwith this notion, and the greater part of the Thoughts 
is nothing but a long application of it. The principle which 
lies at the root of most of his advice, he has himself expressed 
as follows : " That which I cannot too often inculcate is, 
that whatever the matter be about which it is conversant 
whether great or small, the main, I had almost said only 
thing, to be considered in every action of a child is what 
influence it will have upon his mind ; what habit it tends to, 
and is likely to settle in him : how it will become him when 
he is bigger, and if it be encouraged, whither it will lead him 
when he is grown up." {Thoughts, § 107, p. 86.) 

Here we see that Locke differed widely from the school- 
masters of his time, perhaps of all time. A man must be a 
philosopher indeed if he can spend his life in teaching boys, 
and yet always think more about what they will be and what 
they will do when their schooling is over than what they will 
know. And in these days if we stopped to think at all we 
should be trodden on by the examiner.t 



* For Rabelais, see p. 67 supra. 

In the notes to the Cambridge edition of the Thoughts'L,OQk.€s^A\\c^ 
on physical education is discussed and compared with the results of 
modern science by Dr. J. F. Payne. 

t " Examinations directed, as the paper examinations of the numerous 



LOCKE. 229 

Confusion about special cases. Wax. 

In this respect Locke has not been surpassed. Like his 
predecessor Montaigne he took for his centre not the object, 
knowledge, but the subject, man.* 

§ 14. In some other respects he does not seem so happy. 
He makes Uttle attempt to reach a scientific standpoint and 
to estabhsh general truths about our common human nature. 
He thinks not so much of the man as the gentleman, not so 
much of the common laws of the mind as of the peculiarities 
of the individual child. He even hints that differences of 
disposition in children render treatises on education defective 
if not useless. " There are a thousand other things that 
may need consideration" he writes " especially if one should 
take in the various tempers, different inclinations, and 
particular defaults that are to be found in children and 
prescribe proper remedies. The variety is so great that it 
would require a volume, nor would that reach it. Each 
man's mind has some peculiarity as well as his face, that 
distinguishes him from all others ; and there are possibly 
scarce two children who can be conducted by exactly the 
same method : besides that I think a prince, a nobleman, 
or an ordinary gentleman's son should have different ways 
of breeding. But having had here only some general views 
in reference to the main end and aims in education, and those 
designed for a gentleman's son, whom being then very little 
I considered only as white paper or wax to be moulded and 

examining boards now flourishing are directed, to finding out what the 
pupil knows, have the effect of concentrating the teacher's effort upon the 
least important part of his function." Mark Pattisonin N. Quart. M., 
January, 1880. 

* Michelet {cYos^/s, chap. ij. ad/, p. 170), says of Montaigne's essay : 
" c'est deja une belle esquisse, vive et forte, une tentative pour donner, 
Hon I'oijet, le savoir, mais le sujet, c'est I'homme." 



230 LOCKE. 

Locke behind Comenius. 

fashioned as one pleases, I have touched httle more than 
those heads which I judged necessary for the breeding of a 
young gentleman of his condition in general." {Thovghis,^ 
§ 217, p. 187.) 

No language could bring out more clearly the inferiority 
of Locke's standpoint to that of later thinkers. He makes 
little account of our common nature and wishes education to 
be based upon an estimate of the peculiarities of the 
individual pupil and of his social needs. And no one with an 
adequate notion of education could ever compare the young 
child to " white paper or wax," Perhaps the development of 
an organism was a conception that could not have been 
formed without a great advance in physical science. Froebel 
who makes most of it learnt it from the scientific study of 
trees and from mineralogy. We need not then be surprised 
that Locke does not say, as Pestalozzi said a hundred years 
later, " Education instead of merely considering what is to be 
imparted to children ought to consider first what they already 
possess." But if he had read Comenius he would have been 
saved from comparing the child to wax or white paper in the 
hands of the educator. Comenius had said : " Nature has 
implanted within us the seeds of learning, of virtue, and of 
piety. The object of education is to bring these seeds to 
perfection." {SuJ>ra, p. 135.) This seems to me a higher 
conception than any that I meet with in Locke. 

§ 15. Butif our philosopher did not learn from Comenius 
he certainly learnt from Montaigne.* Indeed Dr. Arnstiidt 

* Pope seems to contrast Montaigne and Locke : 
" But ask not to what doctors I apply ! 
" Sworn to no master, of no sect am I : 
•* As drives the storm, at any door I knock, 
"And house with Montaigne now, or now with Locke." 

Satires iij., 26. 



LOCKE. 231 

Humanists, Realists, and Trainers. 

{v. supra, p. 69) has put him into a series of thinkers who 
have much in common. This succession is as follows : 
Rabelais, Montaigne, Locke, Rousseau ; and, according to 
Mr. Browning's division, they form a school by themselves. 
•' Thinkers on education," says Mr. Browning,* "are ist 
those who wish to educate through the study of the classics, 
or 2nd those who wish to educate through the study of the 
works ot Nature, or 3rd those who aim at an education 
independent of study and knowledge, and think rather of the 
training of character and the attaining to the Greek ideal, 
the man beautiful and good." To the three schools Mr. 
Browning gives the names Humanist, Realist, and Naturalist, 
("nos autres naturalistes," Montaigne says). Locke he con- 
sider? one of the principal writers of the "naturalistic" 
school, and says, Locke " has given a powerful bias to natura- 
listic education both in England and on the Continent for 
the last 200 years." {Ed. Theories, p. 85.) 

This use of the word " naturalistic " seems to me somewhat 
misleading, or at best vague, and it is a word overworked 
already: so I should prefer to speak of the "developing" or 
" training" school. The classification itself certainly has its 
uses but it must be employed with caution. If caught up by 
those who have only an elementary acquaintance with the 
subject a class of persons apt to delight in such arrangements 
as an aid to memory, these divisions may easily prove a 
hindrance to light. 

§ 16. This subject of classification is so important to 



Perhaps as Dr. Abbott suggests he took Montaigne as representing 
active and Locke contemplative Hfe. 

*See " An introduction to the History of Educational Theories," by 
Oscar Browning. 



232 LOCKE. 

Caution against classifiers. 

students that it may be worth while to rgake a few remarks 
upon it. The only thoroughly consistent people are the 
people of fiction. We can know all about them. Directly 
we understand their central thought or peculiarity we may be 
sure that everything they say and do will be strictly in 
accordance with it, will indeed be explainable by it. To 
take a bald and simple instance, directly we know that Mrs. 
Jellaby in Bleak House is absorbed by her interest in an 
African Mission, we know all that is to be known about her; 
and everything she does or omits to do has some reference 
to Borrioboola Ghar. But in real life not only are people 
much less easily understood, but when we actually have seized 
their main idea or peculiarity or interest we must not expect 
to find them always' consistent : and they will say and do much 
which if not inconsistent with the main idea or peculiarity or 
interest has at least no connection with it. Suppose, e.g., 
you can make out with some certainty that Locke belonged 
to the developing school, you must not expect him to pay 
little heed to instruction as such. Again, suppose you find that 
his philosophy was utilitarian ; you must not suppose that 
in everything he says he will be thinking of utility. 

Now the historian is tempted to treat real men and women 
as the writer of fiction treats his puppets. Having fastened, 
quite correctly let us suppose, on their main peculiarity he 
considers it necessary to square everything with his theory of 
them, and whatever will not fall in with it he, if he is 
unscrupulous, misrepresents, or if he is scrupulous, suppresses. 

Again, we are too apt to read into words meanings 
derived from controversies unknown at the time when the 
words were uttered. This is a well-known fact in the 
hiscory of religious thought. We must always consider not 
merely the words used but the time when they were used. 



LOCKE. 233 

Locke and development. 

What a man might say quite naturally and orthodoxly at one 
period would be sufficient to convict him of sympathizing 
with some terrible heresy if uttered half a century later, 
We find something like this in the history of education. 
If anyone nowadays speaks of the pleasure with which as 
a young man he read Tacitus, he is understood to mean 
that he is opposed to the introduction of " modern studies " 
into the school-room. If on the other hand he extols 
botany, or regrets that he never learned chemistry, this is 
taken for an assault on classical instruction. But, of course, 
no such inference could be drawn if we went back to a time 
when the antithesis between classics and natural science 
had not been accentuated. In many other instances we 
have to be on our guard against forcing into language 
meaning which belongs rather to a later date, 

§ 17. With these cautions in mind let us see how far 
Locke may be said (i) to be a trainer, and (2) how far a 
utilitarian. 

§ 18. I. Mr. Browning attributes to Rabelais, Montaigne, 
and Locke the desire to bring up a well-developed man 
rather than a good scholar. But Rabelais certainly craved 
for the knowledge of things ; and if he is to be classed at 
all I should put him rather with the Realists, albeit he lived 
before the realistic spirit became powerful. Montaigne 
went more on the lines of developing rather than teaching, 
and, shrewd man of the world as he was, he thought a 
great deal about the art of living. But his ideal was not 
so much the man as the gentleman. This was true also 
of Locke ; and here we see some explanation why both 
Montaigne and Locke do not value classical learning.* 

* " History and the mathematics, I think, are the most proper and 



234 LOCKE. 

Was Locke a utilitarian ? 

On the Continent classical learning has never been asso- 
ciated with tlie character of an accomplished gentleman j 
and, as far as I know, the conception that the highest type 
of excellence is found in the union of " the scholar and the 
gentleman " is peculiar to this country. In the society 
of Locke's day this union does not seem to have been 
recognized, and Locke observes : " A great part of the 
learning now in fashion in the schools of Europe, and that 
goes ordinarily into the round of education, a gentleman 
may in a good measure be unfurnished with, without any 
great disparagement to himself or prejudice to his affairs." 
{Thoughts, § 94, p. 74.) So Locke sought as the true 
essential for the young gentleman "prudence and good 
breeding." He puts his requisites in the following order of 
importance : — i, virtue ; 2, wisdom ; 3, manners; 4, learning; 
and so " places learning last and least." Here he shews 
himself far ahead of those who still held to the learned 
ideal ; but his notions of development were cramped by 
his thinking only of the gentleman and what was requisite 
for him. 

§ ig. IL Was Locke a utilitarian in education? It is 
the fashion (and in history as in other things fashion is a 
powerful force), it is the fashion to treat of Locke as a great 
champion of utilitarianism. We might expect this in the 
ordinary historians, for "when they do agree their unanimity 
is " not perhaps very wonderful. But there is one great 
English authority quite uninfluenced by them who has said 

advantageous studies for persons of your quality ; the other are fitter 
for schoolmen and people that must live by their learning, though a 
little insight and taste of them will be no burthen or inconvenience ta 
you, especially Natural Philosophy." Advice to a young Lord written 
by his father, 1 691, p. 29. 



LOCKE. 235 

Utilitarianism defined. 

the same thing, viz. — Cardinal Newman. The Cardinal, as 
the champion of authority, is perhaps prejudiced against 
Locke, who holds that " the faculty of reasoning seldom 
or never deceived those who trusted to it." Be this as it 
nuy, Newman asserts that "the tone of Locke's remarks is 
condemnatory of any teaching which tends to the general 
cultivation of the mind." i^Idea of a University. Discourse 
vij., § 4 ; see also § 6.) A very interesting point for us to 
consider is then, Is this reputation of Locke's for utilita- 
rianism well deserved ? 

§ 20. First let us be quite certain of our definition. 

Ill learning anything there are two points to be considered ; 
ist, the advantage we shall find from knowing that subject 
or having that skill, and 2nd, the effect which the study of 
that subject or practising for that skill will have on the 
mind or the body. 

These two points are in themselves distinct, though it is 
open to anyone to maintain that they need not be con- 
sidered separately. Nature has provided that the bodies of 
most animals should get the exercise best for them in pro- 
curing food. So Mr. Herbert Spencer has come to the 
conclusion that it would be contrary to " the economy of 
nature " if one set of occupations were needed as gymnastics 
and another for utility. In other words he considers that 
it is in learning the most useful things we get the best 
training. 

The utilitarian view of instruction is that we should teach 
things useful in themselves and either neglect the result on 
the mind and body of the learner or assume Mr. Spencer's 
law of " the economy of nature." 

Again, when the subjects are settled the utilitarian thinks 
how the knowledge or skill may be most speedily acquired, 



236 LOCKE. 

L. not utilitarian in education. 

and not how this method or that method of acquisition will 
afifect the faculties. 

§ 21. This being utilitarianism in education the ques- 
tion is how far was Locke the utilitarian he is generally 
considered ? 

If we take by itself what he says under the head of 
" Learning " in the Thoughts concertiing Education no doubt 
we should pronounce him a utilitarian. He considers each 
subject of instruction and pronounces for or against it 
according as it seems likely or unlikely to be useful to a 
gentleman. And in the methods he suggests he simply 
points out the quickest route, as if the knowledge were the 
only thing to be thought of. Hence his utilitarian reputa- 
tion. 

But two very important considerations have been lost 

sight of. 

ist. Learning is with him "the last and least part" in 
education. 

2nd. Intellectual education was not for childhood but 
for the age when we can teach ourselves. "When a man 
has got an entrance into any of the sciences," says he, " it 
will be time then to depend on himself and rely upon his 
own understanding and exercise his own faculties, which is 
the only way to improvement and mastery." (L. to Peter- 
borough, quoted in Camb. edition of Thoughts, p. 229.) 
" So," he says, " the business of education is not, as I think, 
to make the young perfect in any one of the sciences but so 
to open and dispose their minds as may best make them 
capable of any when they shall apply themselves to it." 
The studies he proposes in the Conduct of the Understand- 
ing (which is his treatise on intellectual education) have for 
their object " an increase of the powers and activity of the 



LOCKE. 237 

Locke's Pisgah Vision. 

mind, not an enlargement of its possessions" (C. of U. 
% 19, adf.). 

Thus strange to say the supposed leader of the Utilitarians 
has actually propounded in so many words the doctrine o! 
their opponents. 

§ 22. When Locke is more studied it will be found 
that the Thoughts are misleading if we neglect his other 
works, more particularly the Conduct of the Understanding. 

§ 23. Towards the end of his days, Locke was conscious 
of gleams of the " untravelled world " which lay before the 
generations to come. With great pathos he writes to a 
friend : " When I consider how much of my life has been 
trifled away in beaten tracks where I vamped on with others 
only to follow those who went before me, I cannot but 
think I have just as much reason to be proud as if I had 
travelled all England and, if you will, all France too, only 
to acquaint myself with the roads, and be able to tell how 
the highways lie wherein those of equipage, and even the 
common herd too, travel. Now, methinks — and these are 
often old men's dreams — I see openings to truth and direct 
paths leading to it, wherein a little application and industry 
would settle one's mind with satisfaction and leave no dark- 
ness or doubt. But this is the end of my day when my sun 
is setting : and though the prospect it has given me be 
what I would not for anything be without — there is so 
much truth, beauty, and consistency in it— yet it is for one 
of your age, I think I ought to say for yourself, to set 
about" (L. to Bolde, quoted by Fowler, Locke, p. 120). But 
another 200 years have not sufficed to put us in possession 
of the Promised Land of which Locke had these Pisgah 
visions. We still " vamp on," following those who went 
t»cfore us and getting small help from expounders of " Edu- 



238 LOCKE. 

Science for education. Names of books. 

cation as a Science." But as it would seem the days of 
vamping on blindly in the beaten track are drawing to a 
close. We cannot doubt that if Locke had known the 
wonderful advance which various sciences have made since 
his day he would have seen in them " openings to truth and 
direct paths leading to it " for many purposes, certainly for 
education. It is for our age and ages to come to set about 
applying our scientific knowledge to the bringing up of 
children ; and thinkers such as Froebel will shew us how. 



Locke's Thoughts concerning Education and his Conduct of the 
Understanding should be in the hands of all students of education who 
know the English language. I have therefore not attempted to epitomise 
what he has said, but have endeavoured to get at the main thoughts 
which are, so to speak, the taproot of his system. Of the Thoughts 
there is an edition published by the National Society and another by 
the Pitt Press, Cambridge. The Cambridge edition gives from Fox- 
Bourne's Life Locke's scheme of "Working Schools"' and from Lord 
King's the essay " Of Studj\" Of the Conduct there is an edition pub- 
lished by the Clarendon Press. " F.B." in the references above stands 
for Fox-Bourne's Life of Locke. 

In the above essay I have not treated of Locke as a methodizer ; but 
he advocated teaching foreign languages without grammar, and he 
published " ^sop's Fables in English and Latin, in terlineary. For 
the benefit of those, who not having a master would learn either of 
these Tongues. " When I edited the Thoughts for Pitt Press I did not 
know of this book or I should have mentioned it. 



XIV. 

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAD. 



(1712-1778). 

§ I. The great men whom we meet with in the history 
of education may be divided into two classes, thinkers and 
doers. There would seem no good reason why the thinker 
should not be great as a doer or the doer as a thinker ; and 
yet we hardly find any records of men who have been 
successful both in investigating theory and directing practice. 
History tells us of first-rate practical schoolmasters like 
Sturm and the Jesuits ; but they did not think out their own 
theory of their task : they accepted the current theory of 
their time. On the other hand, men who like Montaigne 
and Locke rejected the current theory and sought to es- 
tablish a better by an appeal to reason were not practical 
schoolmasters. Whenever the thinker tries to turn his 
thought into action he has cause to be disappointed with 
the result. We saw this in the disastrous failure of Ratke ; 
and even the books in Avhich Comenius tried to work out 
his principles, the Vestibuhwi, Janua and the rest, with the 
exception of the Orbis Fictus, were speedily forgotten. In 
the world of education as elsewhere it takes time to find 
for great thoughts the practice which gives effect to them. 
The course of great thoughts is in some ways like the course 
of great rivers. Most romantic and beautiful near their 
sourcej they are not most useful. They must leave the 



240 ROUSSEAU. 



Middle Age system fell in 18th-century. 

mountains in which they first appeared, and must flow not 
in cataracts but smoothly along the plain among the dwell- 
ings of common men before they can be turned to account 
in the every-day business of life. 

§ 2. The eighteenth century was soon distinguished by 
boundless activity of thought ; and this thought was 
directed mainly to a great work of destruction. Euiope 
had outgrown the ideas of the Middle Age, and the frame- 
work of Society, which the Middle Age had bequeathed, had 
waxed old and was ready to vanish as soon as any strong 
force could be found to push it out of the way. As Matthew 
Arnold has described it — ■ 

" It's frame yet stood without a breach 
"When blood and warmth were fled ; 
"And still it spake it's wonted speech — 
•' But every word was dead." 

Here then there was need of some destructive power 
that should remove and burn up much that had become 
mere obstacle and incumbrance. This power was found in 
the writings which appeared in France about the middle of 
the century ; and among the authors of them none spoke 
with more effect than one who differed from all the rest, a 
vagabond without family ties or social position of any kind, 
with no literary training, with little knowledge and in con- 
duct at least, with no morals. The writings of Rousseau 
and the results produced by them are among the strangest 
things in history; and especially in matters of education it 
is more than doubtful if the wise man of the world Montaigne, 
the Christian philanthropist Comenius, or that " slave of 
truth and reason " the philosopher Locke, had half as much 
influence as this depraved serving man. 
§ 3. The work by which Rousseau became famous was 



ROUSSEAU. 241 



Do the opposite to the usual. 



a prize essay in which he maintained that civilization, the 
art? and all human institutions were from first to last per- 
nicious in their effects, and that no happiness was possible 
for the human race without giving them all up and returning 
to what he called the state of Nature. He glorified the 
" noble savage." If man had brought himself to a state of 
misery bordering on despair by following his own many 
inventions, take away all these inventions and you will have 
man in his proper condition. The argument seems some- 
thing of this kind : Man was once happy : Man is now 
miserable : undo everything that has been done and Man 
will be happy again. 

§ 4. This principle of a so-called " natural " state exist- 
ing before man's many inventions, Rousseau applied boldly 
to education, and he deduced this general rule : " Do p' e- 
cisely the opposite to what is usually done, and you will 
have hit on the right plan." Not reform but revolution was 
his advice. He took the ordinary school teaching and held 
it up to ridicule, and certainly he did prove its absurdity. 
And a most valuable service he thus rendered to teachers. 
Every employment while it makes us see some things 
clearly, also provides us with blinkers, so to speak, which 
prevent our seeing other things at all. The school teacher's 
blinkers often prevent his seeing much that is plain enough 
to other people ; and when a writer like Rousseau takes off 
our blinkers for us and makes us look about us, he does 
us a great deal of good. But we need more than this : if 
j^e have children entrusted to us we must do something 
with them, and Rousseau's rule of doing the opposite to 
what is usual will not be found universally applicable. So 
we consult Rousseau again, and what is his advice ? 

§ 5. Rousseau would bring everything back to the 



242 ROUSSEAU. 



Family life. No education before reason. 

"natural " state, and unfortunately he never pauses to settle 
whether he means by this a state of ideal perfection, or of 
simply savagery. The savage, he says, gets his education 
without any one's troubling about it, and so he infers that 
all the trouble taken by the civilized is worse than thrown 
away. (Girardin's Rousseau, ij., 85.) But he does not fall 
back on laisser /aire. He urges on parents the duty of 
thrmselves attending to the bringing up of their children. 
" Point de mere, point d'enfant^no mother, no child," 
says he ; and he would have the father see to the training 
of the child whom the mother has suckled. 

§ 6. Rousseau's picture of family life is given us where 
few Englishmen are likely to find it, enveloped in the Noic- 
velle Helo'ise. Here we read how Julie always has her 
children with her, and while seeming to let them do as they 
like, conceals with the air of apparent carelessness the 
most vigilant observation. Possessed by the notion that 
there can be no intellectual education before the age of 
reason, she proclaims : " La fonction dont je suis chargee 
n'est pas d'elever mes fils, mais de les preparer pour etre 
^lev^s : My business is not to educate my sons, but to 
prepare them for being educated." {N. Helo'ise, 5th P., 
Lett. 3.)* 

§ 7. There is much that is very pleasing in this picture 
of ideal family life ; but when Rousseau comes formally to 
propound his ideas on education, he gives up family life to 
attain greater simplicity. "Jem'entiens k ce qui est plus 
simple," says he : " What I stick to is the more simple^ 
He tries to state everything in its lowest terms, so to speak ; 
and this method is excellent so long as he puts on one side 

* " 11 n'y a point avant la raison de veritable education pom 
I'h -mine." (N. H., Sth P., Lett. 3. Conf. supra, p. 227.) 



ROUSSEAU. 243 



R. "neglects" essentials. Lose time. 

only what is accidental, and retains all the essentials of the 
problem. But his rage for simplicity sometimes earned 
him beyond this. There is an old Cambridge story of a 
problem introducing an elephant " whose weight may be 
neglected." This is after the manner of Rousseau. In the 
bringing up of the model child, he " neglects " parents, 
b] others and sisters, young companions; and though he 
says that the needful qualities of a master may be expected 
only in " un homme de g^nie," he hands over Emile to a 
governor to live an isolated life in the country. 

§ 8. This governor is to devote himself, for some years, 
entirely to imparting to his pupil these difficult arts — the 
art of being ignorant and of losing time. Till he is twelve 
years old, Emile is to have no direct instruction whatever. 
"At that age he shall not know what a book is," says Rous- 
seau ; though elsewhere we are told that he will learn to 
read of his own accord by the time he is ten, if no 
attempt is made to teach him. He is to be under no re- 
straint, and is to do nothing but what he sees to be useful. 

§ 9. Freedom from restraint is, however, to be apparent, 
not real. As in ordinary education the child employs all 
its faculties in duping the master, so in education "accord- 
ing to Nature " the master is to devote himself to duping 
the child. " Let him always be his own master in appear- 
ance, and do you take care to be so in reality. There is no 
subjection so complete as that which preserves the appear- 
ance of liberty ; it is by this means even the will is led 
captive." 

§ 10. "The most critical interval of human nature is 
that between the hour of our birth and twelve years of age. 
This is the time wherein vice and error take root without 
our being possessed of any instrument to destroy them." 



244 ROUSSEAU. 



Early education negative. 



{All. {]., 79.) Throughout this season, the governor is to be 
at work training the pupil in the art of being ignorant and 
losing time. "The first education should be purely nega- 
tive. It consists by no means in teaching virtue or truth, 
but in securing the heart from vice and the intellect from 
error. If you could do nothing and let nothing be done, 
if you could bring on your pupil healthy and strong to the 
age of 12 without his being able to tell his right hand 
from his left, from your very first lessons the eyes of his 
understanding would open to reason. Being without pre- 
judices and without habits he would have nothing in him 
to thwart the effect of your care ; and by beginning with 
doing nothing you would have made an educational pro- 
digy."* 

" Exercise his body, his organs, his senses, his powers ; 
but keep his mind passive as long as possible. Mistrust 
all his sentiments formed before the judgment which deter- 
mines their value. Restrain, avoid all foreign impressions, 
and to prevent the birth of evil be in no hurry to cause 
good ; for good is good only in the light of reason. Look 
on all delays as so many advantages : it is a great gain to 
advance towards the goal without loss : let childhood ripen 
in children. In short, whatever lesson they may need, be 

* " La premiere education doit done etre purement negative. Ella 
consiste, noi point a enseigner la vertu ni la verite, ma"is ^ garanlir le cceur 
du vice et I'esprit de I'erreur. Si vous pouviez ne rien faire et ne rien 
laisser faire ; si vous pouviez arcener votre eleve sain et robuste b. I'age 
de douze ans, sans qu'il sut dibtingiier sa main droite desa main gauche, 
des vos premieres le9ons les yeux de son entendement s'ouvriraient a la 
raison ; sans prejuge?, sans habitudes, il n'aurait rien en lui qui pflt 
contrarier I'effet de vos soins. Bientot il deviendrait entre vos mains le 
plus sage des hommes ; et, en commen^ant par ne rien faire, voiu 
aurit^z fait un prodige d'education." £m. ij., So. 



ROUSSEAU. 245 



Childhood the sleep of reason. 



Bure not to give it them to-day if you can safely put it off 
til! to-morrow."* 

** Do not, then, alarm yourself much about this apparent 
idleness. What would you say of the man, who, in order 
to make the most of life, should determine never to go to 
sleep ? You would say. The man is mad : he is not enjoying 
the time ; he is depriving himself of it : to avoid sleep he is 
hurrying towards death. Consider, then, that it is the 
same here, and that childhood is the sleep of reason,"f 

§ II. We have now reached the climax (or shall 
we say the nadir ?) in negation. Rousseau has given the 
coup de grace to the ideal of the Renascence. Comenius was 
the first to take a comprehensive view of the educator's task 
and to connect it with man's nature and destiny ; but he 
could not get clear from an over-estimate of the importance 
of knowledge. According to his ideal, man should know all 
things ; so in practice he thought too much of imparting 
knowledge. Then came Locke and treated the imparting 

* " Exercez son corps, ses organes, ses sens, ses forces, mais tenez 
son ame oisive aussi longtemps qu'il se pourra. Redoutez tous les sent- 
ments anterieurs au jugement qui les apprecie. Retenez, arretez les 
impressions etrangeres : et, pour empecher le mal de naitre, ne vous 
pressez point de faire le bien ; car il n'est jamais tel que quand la raison 
I'eclaire. Regardez tous les delais comme des avantages : c'est gagner 
beaucoup que d'avancer vers le terme sans rien perdre ; laissez murir 
I'enfance dans les enfants. Enfin quelque Ie9on leur devient-elle nece? • 
saire, gardez-vous de la donner aujourd'hui, si vous pouvez diffcrer 
jusqu'a demain sans danger." Em. ij., 80. 

t " Effrayez-vous done peu de cette oisivete pr^t endue. Que diiiez- 
vous d'un homme qui, pour mettre toute la vie a profit, ne voudrait 
jamais dormir? Vous diriez : Cet homme est insense ; il nejouitpas 
du temps, il se I'ote ; pour fuir le sommeil il court a la mort. Songez 
done que c'est ici la meme chose, et que I'enfance est le sommeil de la 
raison." ^w. ij., 99. 



246 ROUSSEAU. 



Start from study of the child. 



of knowledge as of trifling importance when compared with 
the formation of character; but he too in practice hardly 
went so far as this principle might have led him. He was 
much under the influence of social distinctions, and could 
not help thinking of what it was necessary for a gentleman 
to know. So that Rousseau was the very first to shake 
himself entirely free from the notion which the Renascence 
had handed down that man was mainly a learning animal. 
Rousseau has the courage to deny this in the most 
emphatic manner possible, and to say : "For the first 12 
years the educator must teach the child nothing." 

§ 12. In this reaciion against the Renascence Rousseau 
puts the truth in the form of such a violent plradox that we 
start back in terror. But it was perhaps necessary thus to 
sweep away the ordinary schoolroom rubbish before the true 
nature of the educator's task could be fairly considered. 
The rubbish having been cleared away what was to take 
its place ? No longer having his mind engrossed by the 
knowledge he wished to communicate, the educator had now 
an eye for something else not less worthy of his attention, 
viz., the child itself Rousseau was the first to base educa- 
tion entirely on a study of the child to be educated ; and by 
doing this he became, as I believe, one of the greatest of 
educational Reformers. 

§ 13. It was, however, purely as a thinker, or rather as a 
voi^e giving expression to the general discontent that 
Rousseau became such a tremendous force in Europe. He 
has indeed often been called the fadier of the first French 
Revolution which he did not live to see. But, as Macaulay 
has well said, a good deal besides eloquent writing is needed 
to cause such a convulsion ; and we can no more attribute 
the French Revolution to the writings of Rousseau than we 



ROUSSEAU. 247 



R.'s paradoxes un-English. 



can attribute the shock of an explosion of gunpowder to tlie 
hicifer match without which it might never have happened. 
{z>. Macaulay's Barrlre). Rousseau did in the world of 
ideas what the French Revolutionists afterwards did in the 
w'orld of politics ; he made a clean sweep and endeavoured 
to start afresh. 

§ 14. I have already said that as regards education I 
think his labours in destruction were of very great value. 
But what shall we say of his efforts at construction ? There 
would not be the least difficulty in showing that most of 
his proposals are impracticable. It is no more " natural " 
to treat as a typical case a child brought up in solitude than 
it would be to write a treatise on the rearing of a bee cut 
off from the hive.* Rousseau requires impossibilities, e.g., 
he postulates that the child is never to be brought into 
contact with anyone who might set a bad example. 
Modern science has shown us that the young are liable to take 
diseases from impurities in the air they breathe : but as 
yet no one has proposed that all children should be kept 
at an elevation of 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. 
Yet the advice would be about as practicable as the advice 
of Rousseau. A method which always starts with paradox 
and not infrequently ends with platitude might seem to 
have little in its favour ; and Rousseau has had far less 
influence since (in the words of Herman Merivale) "he 
was dethroned with the fall of his extravagant child, the 
[First] Republic." No doubt the great exponent of English 

* "II n'y a pas de philosophic plus superficielle que celle qui, prenant 
I'homme comine un etre egoiste et viager, preten:! I'expliquer et lui 
tracer ses devoirs en dehors de la societe dont il est ane partie. Autant 
vaut considerer I'abeille abstraction faite de la ruche, et dire qu'k elle 
fceule I'abeille construit son alveole." Renan, La R^ forme ^ 312. 



248 ROUSSEAU, 



Man the corrupter. The three educations. 

opinion was right in calling Rousseau " the most un-English 
stranger who ever landed on our shores" {Times., 29 Aug., 
1S73); and the torch of his eloquence will never cause a 
conflagration, still less an explosion, here. His disregard 
for "appearances" — or rather his evident purpose of 
making an impression by defying " appearances " and 
saying just the opposite of what is expected, is simply 
distressing to us. But there is no denying Rousseau's 
genius. His was one of the original voices that go on 
sounding and awakening echoes in all lands. Willingly or 
unwillingly, at first hand or from imperfect echoes, everyone 
who studies education must study Rousseau. 

§ 15. As specimens of Rousseau's teaching I will give 
a few characteristic passages from the Emile. 

" Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Creator : 
everything degenerates in the hands of man."* These are 
the first words of the " Emile," and the key-note of Rous- 
seau's philosophy. 

§ 16. "We are born weak, we have need of strength; 
we are born destitute of everything, we have need of assist- 
ance ; we are born stupid, we have need of understanding. 
All that we have not at our birth, and which we require 
when grown up, is bestowed on us by education. This 
education we receive from nature, from men, or from 
things. The internal development of our organs and 
faculties is the education of nature : the use we are taught 
to make of that development is the education given us by 
men ; and in the acquisitions made by our own experience 
on the objects that surround us, consists our education 

• "Tout est bien, sortant des mains de I'Auteur des choses ; lout 
degen^re entre les mains de Thomme." 



ROUSSEAU. 249 



The aim, living thoroughly. 



from things."* "Since the concurrence of these three 
kinds of education is necessary to their perfection, it is by 
that one which is entirely independent of us, we must 
regulate the two others."t 

§ 1 7. Now " to live is not merely to breathe ; it is to 
act, it is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, 
and of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling 
of our existence. The man who has lived most, is not he 
who has counted tlie greatest number of years, but he who 
has most thoroughly felt life."J 

§ 18. The aim of education, then, must be com.plete 
living. 

But ordinary education, instead of seeking to develop 
the life of the child, sacrifices childhood to the acquirement 
of knowledge, or rather the semblance of knowledge, which 
it is thought will prove useful to the youth or the man. 

" Nous naissons faibles, nous avons besoin de forces ; nous naisscns 
depourvus de tout, nous avons besoin d'assistance ; nous naissons stu- 
pides, nous avons besoin de jugement. Tout ce que nous n'avons pas a 
notre naissance, et dont nous avons besoin etant grands, nous est donne 
par I'education. Cette education nous vient ou de la nature, ou des 
hommes, ou des choses. Le developpement interne de nos facultes et de 
nos organes est I'education de la nature ; I'usage qu'on nous apprend a, 
faire de ce developpement est I'education des hommes ; et I'acquis de 
notre propre experience sur les objets qui nous affectent est Teducation 
des choses." £ni. j., 6. 

t " Puisque le concours des trois educations est necessaire k leur per- 
fection, c'est sur celle a laquelle nous ne pouvous rien qu'il faut diiigei 
les deux autres." Em. ]., 7. 

+ " Vivre ce n'est pas respirer, c'est agir ; c'est faire usage de nos or- 
ganes, de nos sens, de nos facultes, de toutes les parties de nous-memes 
qui nous donnent le sentiment de notre existence. L'homme qui a le 
plus vecu n'est pas celui qui a compte le plus d'annees, mais celui qui a 
leplus senti la vie." Efn. j., 13. 



250 ROUSSEAU. 



Children not small men. 



Rousseau's great merit lies in his having exposed this 
fundamental error. He says, very truly, " We do not under- 
stand childhood, and pursuing false ideas of it our eveiy 
i,tep takes us further astray. The wisest among us fix upon 
what it concerns men to know without ever considering 
what children are capable of learning. They always expect 
to find the man in the child without thinking of what the 
child is before it is a man. And this is the study to which 
I have especially devoted myself, in order that should my 
entire method be false and visionary, my observations might 
always turn to account. I may not have seen aright what 
ought to be done : but I believe I have seen aright the 
subject on which we have to act. Begin then by studying 
your pupils better, for most certainly you do not under- 
stand them."*^ "Nature wills that children should be 
childrefi before they are 7ne7i, If we seek to pervert this 
order we shall produce forward fruits without ripeness or 
flavour, and tho' not ripe, soon rotten : we shall have young 
savans and old children. Childhood has ways of seeing, 
thinking, feeling peculiar to itself; nothing is more absurd 
than to wish to substitute ours in theii place."t "We 

* " On ne connait point I'enfance : sur les fausses idees qu'on en a, plus 
on va, plus on s'egare. Les plus sages s'attachent a ce qu'il iniporte aux 
hommes de savoir, sans considerer ce que les enfants sont en etat d'ap- 
prendre. lis cherchent toujours I'liomme dans I'enfant, sans penser k ce 
qu'il est avant que d'etre homme. Voila I'etude a laquelle je me suis le 
plus applique, afin que, quand toute ma methode serait chimerique et 
fausse, on put toujours profiler de mes observations. Je puis avoir 
tres-mal vu ce qu'il faut faire ; mais je crois avoir bien vu le sujet sur 
lequel on doit operer. Commencez done par mieux etudier vos eleves ; 
car tres-assurement vous ne les connaissez point." 

+ " La nature veut que les enfants soient enfants avant que d'etre 
hommes. Si nous voulons pervertir cet ordre, nous produirons des fruits 



ROUSSEAU. 251 



Schoolmasters' contempt for childhood. 

never knoM how to put ourselves in the place of children ; 
we do not enter into their ideas, we attribute to them our 
own ; and following always our own train of thought, even 
tvilh syllogisms we manage to fill their heads with nothing 
but extravagance and error."* " I wish some discreet 
person would give us a treatise on the art of observing 
children — an art wliich would be of immense value to us, 
but of which fathers and schoolmasters have not as yet 
learnt the very first rudiments."! 

§ 19. In these passages, Rousseau strikes the key-note 
of true education. The first thing necessary for us is to see 
aright the subject on which we have to act. Unfortunately, 
however, this subject has often been the subject most 
neglected in the schoolroom. Children have been treated 
as if they were made for their school books, not their school 
books for them. As education has been thought of as 
learning, childhood has been treated as unimportant, a 
necessary stage in existence no doubt, but far more trouble- 
some and hardly more interesting than the state of the 

precoces qui n'auront ni maturite ni saveur, et ne tarderont pas k se cor- 
rompre : nous aurons de jeunes docteurs etde vieuxenfants. L'enfance 
a des manieres de voir, de penser, de sentir, qui lui sont propres ; rien 
n'est moins sense que d'y vouloir substituer les notres." E/n. ij., 75 ; 
also in JV. H., p. 47S. 

* " Nous ne savons jamais nous mettre a la place des enfants ; nous 
n'enlrons pas dans ieurs ideas, nous leur pretons les nolres; et, suivant 
loujonrs nos propres raisonnenients, avec des chaines de verites nous 
n'enlassons qu'extravagances et qu'erreurs dans leur tete." li.in. iij., 
185. 

t " Je voudrais qu'un homme judicieux nous dcinnat un traite de 
I'art d'observer les enfants. Cet art serait tres-important a connaitre : 
les peres et les maitres n'en ont pas encore les elements." ^m. iij., 
224. 



252 ROUSSEAU. 



Schoolroom rubbish. 



chrysalis. If some forms of words, tables, declensions, 
county towns, and the like can be drummed into children, 
this is, say educators of the old school, a clear gain. Fyi 
the rest nothing can be done with them except teaching 
them to read, write, and say the multiplication table. 

But since the publication of the Emile, there has been in 
the world a very different view of education. According to 
this view, the importance of childhood is not to be measured 
by the amount oi our knowledge, or even the number oi our 
words, we can force it to remember. According to this 
view, in dealing with children we must not think of our 
knowledge or of our notions at all. We must think not of 
our own minds, but of the minds of the little ones.* 

§ 20. The absurd results in which the opposite course 
has ended, Rousseau exposes with great severity. " All the 
studies demanded from the poor unfortunates lead to such 
things as are entirely beyond the range of their ideas, so you 
may judge what amount of attention they can give to them. 
Schoolmasters who make a great display of the instruction 
they give their pupils are paid to differ from me ; but we 
see from what they do that they are entirely of my opinion. 
For what do they really teach ? Words, words, for ever 
words. Among the various knowledges which they boast 
of giving, they are careful not to include such as would be 
of use ; because these would involve a knowledge of things, 
and there they would be sure to fail; but they choose 
subjects that seem to be known when the terms are known 



* Rousseau says : " Full of what is going on in your own head, you 
do not see the effect you produce in tlieir head : Plains de ce qui se 
p:isse dans votre tete vous ne voyez pas I'effet que vous produisez dans 
la leur." {^m. lib. ij., 83.) 



ROUSSEAU. 253 



Ideas before symbols. 



such as heraldry, geography, chronology, languages and the 
like ; all of them studies so foreign to a man, and still more 
to a child, that it is a great chance if anything of the whole 
lot ever proves useful to him on a single occasion in his 
whole life."* "Whatever the study may be, without the 
idea of the things represented the signs representing them 
go for nothing. And yet the child is always kept to these 
signs without our being able to make him comprehend any 
of the things they represent. "f What does a child under- 
stand by "the globe"? An old geography book says 
candidly, that it is a round thing made of plaster ; and this 
is the only notion children have of it. What a fearful waste, 
and worse than waste, it is to make them learn the signs 
without the things, when if they ever learn the things, they 
must at the same time acquire the signs ! (Conf Ruskin 
supra 1^. i^g, note.) "No! if Nature gives to the child's 

• " Or, toutes les etudes forcees de ces pauvres infortunes tendent k 
ces objets entierement etrangers a leurs esprits. Qu'on juge de I'atten- 
tion qu'ils y peuvent donner. Les pedagogues qui nous etalent en 
grand appareil les instructions qu'ils donnent k leurs disciples sent 
payes pour tenir un autre lang.ige : cependant on voit, par leur propre 
conduite, qu'ils pensent exactement comme moi. Car que leur 
apprennent-ils enfin ? Des mots, encore des mots, et toujours des mots. 
Parmi les diverses sciences qu'ils se vantent de leur enseigner, ils se 
gardent bien de choisir celles qui leur seraient veritablement utiles, 
parce que ce seraient des sciences de choses, et qu'ils n'y reussiraient 
pas ; mais celles qu'on paralt savoir quand on en sait les termes, le 
blason, la geographie, la chronologie, les langues, etc. ; toutes etudes si 
loin de rhomme, et surtout de I'enfant, que c'est une merveille si rien 
de tout cela lui peut etre utile une seule fois en sa vie." £m. ij., ick>. 

T " En quelque etude que ce puisse etre, sans I'idee des choses repre- 
sentees, les signes representants ne sent rien. On borne pourtant tou- 
jours I'enfant k ces signes, sans jamais pouvoir lui fahre coniprendre 
auoune des choses qu'ils representent." Mm. ij., 102. 



254 ROUSSEAU 



Right ideas for children. 



brain this pliability which makes it capable of receiving 
impressions of every kind, this is not that we may engrave 
on it the names of kings, dates, the technical words of 
heraldry, of astronomy, of geography, and all those words 
meaningless at his age and useless at any age, with which 
we oppress his sad and sterile childhood ; but that all the 
ideas which he can conceive and which are useful to him, 
all those which relate to his happiness and will one day 
make his duty plain to him, may trace themselves there in 
characters never to be effaced, and may assist him in 
conducting himself through life in a manner appropriate to 
his nature and his faculties."* 

* " Non, si la nature donne au cerveau d'un enfant cette souplesse qui 
le rend propre k recevoir toutes sortes d'impressions, ce n'est pas pour 
qu'on y grave des noms de rois, des dates, des termes de blason, de 
sphere, de geographic, et tous ces mots sans aucun sens pour son age et 
sans aucune utilite pour quelque age que ce soit, dont on accable sa 
triste et sterile enfance ; mais c'est pour que toutes les idees qu'il peut 
concevoir et qui lui sont utiles, toutes celles qui se rapportent a son 
bonheuret doivent I'eclairer un jour sur ses devoirs, s'y tracent de bonne 
heure en caracteres ineffa9ables, et lui servent a se condiiire pendant sa 
vie d'une maniere convenable k son etreet a ses facultes." Em. ij., 105; 
also A^. H., P. v., L. 3. 

Sans etudier dans les livres, I'espece de memoire que peut avoir un 
enfant ne reste pas pour cela oisive ; tout ce qu'il voit, tout ce qu'il en- 
tend le frappe, et il s'en souvient ; il tient registre en lui-meme des 
actions, des discours des hommes ; et tout ce qui I'environne est le livre 
^ans lequel, sans y songer, il enrichit continuellemenc sa memoire, en 
attendant que son jugement puisse en profiter. C'est dans le choix de 
ces objets, c'est dans le soin de lui presenter sans cesse ceux qu'il peut 
ccnnaltre, et de lui cacher ceux qu'il doit ignorer, que consiste le veri- 
table an de cultiver en lui cette premiere facuUe; et c'est par la qu'il faut 
tacher de lui former un magasin de connaissances qui servent k son 
Education durant sa jeunesse, et k sa conduite dans tous les temps, 
Cette methode, il est vrai, ne forme point de petits prodiges et ne fait 



ROUSSEAU. 255 



Child-gardening. Child's activity. 

§ 21. With Rousseau, as afterwards with Froebel, 
education was a kind of "child-gardening." "Plants are 
developed by cultivation," says he, " men by education : 
On fagonne les plantes par la culture, et les homines ])ar 
I'education " {Em. j., 6). The governor, who is the child- 
gardener, is to aim at three things : first, he is to shield the 
child from all corrupting influences ; second, he is to devote 
himself to developing in the child a healthy and strong 
body in which the senses are to be rendered acute by 
exercise ; third, he is, by practice not precept, to cultivate 
the child's sense of duty. 

§ 22. In his study of children Rousseau fixed on their 
never-resting activity. "The failing energy concentrates itself 
in the heart of the old man ; in the heart of the child energy is 
overflowing and spreads outwards; he feels in him life enough 
to animate all his surroundings. Whether he makes or 
mars it is all one to him : it is enough that he has changed 
the state of things, and every change is an action. If he 
seems by preference to destroy, this is not from mischief; 
but the act of construction is always slow, and the act of 
destruction being quicker is more suited to his vivacity."* 

One of the first requisites in the care of the young is 

pas briller les gouvernantes et les precepteurs ; mais elle forme des 
hommes judicieux, robustes, sains de corps et d'entendment, qui, sans 
s'etre fait admirer etant jeunes, se font honorer etant grands. 

* " L'activite defaillantese concentre dans le coeurdu vieillard ; dans 
celui de I'enfant elle est surabondante et s'etend au dehors; il se sent, 
pour ainsi dire, assez de vie pour animer tout ce qui I'environne. Qu'il 
fasse ou qu'il defasse, il n'importe ; il suffit qu'il change I'etat des choses, 
et tout changement est une action. Que s'il semble avoir plus de pen- 
chant a detruire, ce n'est point par mechancete, c'est que I'actior: qui 
forme est toujours lente, et que celle qui detruit, etant plus rapide, con' 
vient mieux ^ sa vivacite." ^m. j., 47. 



256 ROUSSEAU. 



No sitting still or reading. 



then to provide for the expansion of their activity. All 
restraints such as swaddling clothes for infants and "school" 
and " lessons " for children are to be entirely done away 
with.* Literary instruction must not be thought of. 
"There must be no other book than the world," says 
Rousseau, " no other instruction than facts. The child who 
reads does not think, he does nothing but read, he gets no 
instruction ; he learns words : Point d'autre livre que le 
monde, point d'autre instruction que les faits. L'enfant 
qui lit ne pense pas, il ne fait que lire ; il ne s'instruit pas, 
il apprend les mots." {J^m. iij'., i8i.)t 

* It would be difficult to find a man more English, in a good sense, 
than the present Lord Derby or, whether we say it in praise or dispraise, 
a man less like Rousseau. So it is interesting to find him in agreement 
with Rousseau in condemning the ordinary restraints of the school- 
room. " People are beginning to find out what, if they would use their 
own observation more, and not follow one another like sheep, they 
would have found out long ago, that it is' doing positive harm to a 
young child, mental and bodily harm, to keep it learning or pretending 
to learn, the greater part of the day. Nature says to a child, ' Run 
about,' the schoolmaster says, 'Sit still;' and as the schoolmaster 
can punish on the spot, and Nature only long afterwards, he is obeyed, 
and health and brain %\xiiQr"—Sfeeck in 1864. 

t All this is very crude, and so is the artifice by which Julie in the 
Nouvelle HeLnse entraps her son into learning to read. No doubt 
Rousseau is right when he says ihat where there is a desire to read the 
power is sure to come. But " reading " is one thing in the lives of the 
labouring classes to whom it means reading aloud in school, and quite 
another in families of literary tastes and habits with whom the range of 
thought is in a great measure dependent on books. In such families 
the children learn to read as surely as they learn to talk. They 
mostly have access to books which they read to themselves for 
pleasure ; and of course it is absurdly untrue to say that they learn 
nothing but words and do not think. In my opinion it may be ques- 
tioned whether the world of fiction into which their reading gives them 



ROUSSEAU. 257 



Memory without books. 



§ 23. If it be objected that, according to Rousseau's 
plan, there would be a neglect of memory, he replie:; : 
" Without the study of books the kind of memory tluit a 
child should have will not remain inactive ; all he sees, all 
he hears, strikes him, and he remembers it; he keeps a 
record in himself of people's actions and people's talk; and 
all around him makes the book by which without thinking 
of it he is constantly enriching his memory against the time 
that his judgment may benefit by it : Sans ^tudier dans les 
livres, I'espece de memoire que peut avoir un enfant ne 
reste pas pour cela oisive ; tout ce qu'il voit, tout ce qu'il 
entend le frappe, et il s'en souvient ; il tient registre en lui- 
meme des actions, des discours des hommes ; et tout ce 
qui I'environne est le livre, dans lequel, sans y songer, il 
enrichit continuellement sa memoire, en attendant que son 
jugement puisse en profiter." {Em. ij., 106.) We should be 
most careful not to commit to our memory anything we do 
not understand, for if we do, we can never tell what part of 
our stores really belong to us. {Em. iij., 236.) 

§ 24. On the positive side the most striking part of 
Rousseau's advice relates to the training of the senses. 
" The first faculties which become strong in us," says he, 
" are our senses. These then are the first that should be 
cultivated ; they are in fact the only faculties we forget or 

the entree does not withdraw them too much from the actual world in 
which they live. The elders find it very convenient when the child can 
always be depended on to amuse himself with a book ; but noise and 
motion contribute more to health of body and perhaps of mind also. 
While children of well-to-do parents often read too much, the children 
of our schools "under government " hardly get a notion what reading 
is. In these schools " reading " always stands for vocal reading, and 
the power and the habit of using books for pleasure or for knowledge 
(other than verbal) are little cultivated. 
8 



258 ROUSSEAU. 



Use of the senses in childhood. 

at least those which we neglect most completely." We find 
that the young child "wants to touch and handle evcrj^- 
thing. By no means check this restlessness ; it points to a 
very necessary apprenticeship. Thus it is that the child 
gets to be conscious of the hotness or coldness, the hardne^^s 
or softness, the heaviness or hghtness of bodies, to judge of 
their size and shape and all their sensible properties by 
looking, feeling, listening, especially by comparing sight 
and touch, and combining the sensations of the eye with 
those of the fingers."* " See a cat enter a room for the 
first time; she examines round and stares and sniffs about 
without a moment's rest, she is satisfied with nothing before 
she has tried it and made it out. This is just what a child 
does when he begins to walk, and enters, so to say, the 
chamber of the world. The only difference is that to the 
sight which is common to the child and the cat the first 
joins in his observations the hands which nature has given 
him, and the other animal that subtle sense of smell which 
has been bestowed upon her. It is this tendency, according 
as it is well cultivated or the reverse, that makes children 
either sharp or dull, active or slow, giddy or thoughtful. 

" The first natural movements of the child being then to 
measure himself with his surroundings and to test in 
everything he sees all its sensible properties which may 
concern him, his first study is a kind of experimental 

* " II veut tout toucher, tout manier ; ne vous opposez point k celte 
inquietude ; elle lui suggere un apprentissage tres-necessaire. Cest 
ainsi qu'il apprend k sentir la chaleur, le froid, la durete, la moliesse, 
la pesanteur, la legerete des corps ; a juger de leur grandeur, de leur 
figure et de toutes leurs qualites sensibles, en regardant, p^lpant, 
ccoutant, surtout en comparant la vue au toucher, en estimant k I'oeil 
la sensation qu'ils feraient sous ses doigts." J^m. J., 43. 



ROUSSEAU. 259 



Intellect based on the senses. 



physics relating to his own preservation ; and from this we 
divert him to speculative studies before he feels himself at 
home here below. So long as his delicate and flexible 
organs can adjust themselves to the bodies on which they 
ought to act, so long as his senses as yet imcorrupted are 
free from illusion, this is the time to exercise them all in 
their proper functions ; this is the time to learn to under- 
stand the sensuous relations which things have with us. 
As everything that enters the mind finds its way through 
the senses, the first reason of a human being is a reason of 
sensations; this it is which forms the basis of the intellectual 
reason ; our first masters in philosophy are our feet, our 
hands, our eyes. Substituting books for all this is not 
teaching us to reason, but simply to use the reason of other 
people ; it teaches us to take a great deal on trust and 
never to know anything. 

" In order to practise an art we must begin by getting 
the proper implements ; and that we may have good use of 
these implements they must be made strong enough to 
stand wear and tear. That we may learn to think we must 
then exercise our members, our senses, our organs, as these 
are the implements of our intelligence ; and that we may 
make the most of these implements the body which supplies 
them must be strong and healthy. We see then that far 
from man's true reason forming itself independently of his 
body, it IS the sound constitution of the body that makes 
tlic operations of the mind easy and certain."* 

* " Voyez un chat entrer pour la premiere fois dans une chambre: il 
visite, il regarde, il flaire, il ne reste pas un moment en repos, il ne se 
fie a rien qu'apres avoir tout examine, tout connu. Ainsi fait un enfant 
commandant a marcher, et entrant pour ainsi dire dans I'espace du 
monde. Toute la difference est qu'k la vue, commune k I'enfant et au 



26o ROUSSEAU. 



Cultivation of the senses. 



§ 25. Rousseau does not confine himself to advising 
that the senses should be cultivated ; he also gives some 
hints of the way in which they should be cultivated, and 
many modern experiments, such as " object lessons " and 
the use of actual weights and measures, may be directly 
traced to him. " As soon as a child begins to distinguish 
objects, a proper choice should be made in those which are 
presented to him," Elsewhere he says, '• To exercise the 
senses is not simply to make use of them ; it is to learn to 
judge aright by means of them ; it is to learn, so to say, to 
perceive ; for we can only touch and see and hear according 
as we have learnt how. There is a kind of exercise 
perfectly natural and mechanical which serves to make the 
body strong without giving anything for the judgment to lay 
hold of: swimming, running, jumping, whip-top, stone 
throwing ; all this is capital ; but have we nothing but arms 
and legs ? have we not also eyes and ears ? and are these 
organs not needed in our use of the others ? Do not then 
merely exercise the strength but exercise all the senses 

chat, le premier joint, pour observer, les mains que lui donna la nature, 
et I'autre I'odorat subtil dont elle I'a doue. Cette disposition, bien ou 
mal cultivee, est ce qui rend les enfants adroits ou lourds, pesants ou 
dispos, etourdis ou pradents. Les premiers mouvements naturels de 
I'homme etant done de se mesurer avec tout ce qui I'environne, et 
d'eprouver dans chaque objet qu'il aper^oit toutes les qualites sensibles 
qui peuvent se rapporter 4 lui, sa premiere etude est une sorte de 
physique experimentale relative i sa propre conservation, et dont on le 
detourne par des etudes speculatives avant qu'il ait reconnu sa place 
ici-bas. Tandis que ses organes delicats et flexibles peuvent s'ajuster 
aux corps sur lesquels ils doivent agir, tandis que ses sens encore purs 
sont exempts d'illusion, c'est le temps d'exercer les uns et les auties 
aux lonctions qui leur sont propres ; c'est le temps d'apprendre 4 
connaitre les rapports sensibles que les choses ont avec nous. Comme 
tout ce qui entre dans I'entendement humain y vient par les sens, la 



ROUSSEAU. 261 



Music and drawing-. 



which direct it ; get all you can out of each of them, and 
then check the impressions of one by the impressions cf 
another. Measure, reckon, -weigh, compare."* 

§ i6. Two subjects there were in which Emile was to 
receive instruction, viz. : music and drawing. Rousseau's 
advice about drawing is well worth considering. He says : 
" Children who are great imitators all try to draw. I should 
wish my child to cultivate this art, not exactly for the art 
itself, but to make his eye correct and his hand supple : 

premiere raison de I'homme est une raison sensitive ; c'elle qui sert de 
base a la raison intellectuelle : nos premiers maitres de philosophie sont 
nos pieds, nos mains, nos yeux. Substituer des livres a tout cela, ce 
n'est pas nous apprendre k raisonner, c'est nous apprendre k nous 
servir de la raison d'autrui ; c'est nous apprendre k beaucoup croire, et 
h ne jamais rien savoir. Pour exercer un art, il faut commencer par 
s'en procurer les instruments ; et, pour pouvoir employer utilement ces 
instruments, il faut les faire assez solides pour resister a leur usage. 
Pour apprendre a penser, il faut done exercer nos membres, nos sens, 
nos organes, qui sont les instruments de notre intelligence ; et pour 
tirer tout le parti possible de ces instruments, il faut que le corps, qui 
les fournit, soit robuste et fain. Ainsi, loin que la veritable raison de 
I'homme se forme independamment du corps, c'est la bonne constitution 
du corps qui rend les operations de I'esprit faciles et sures." Em. ij., 

123. 

* " Exercer les sens n'est pas seulement en faire usage, c'est appren- 
dre a bien juger par eux, c'est apprendre, pour ainsi dire, ci sentir ; car 
nous ne savons ni toucher, ni voir, ni entendre, que comme nous avons 
appris. II y a un exercice purement naturel et mecanique, qui sert a 
rendre le corps robuste sans donner aucune prise au jugement : nager, 
ccurir, sauter, fouetter un sabot, lancer des pierres ; tout cela est foit 
bien : mais n'avons-nous que des bras et des jambes ? n'avons-nous pas 
aussi des yeux, des oreilles ? et ces organes sont-ils superflus a I'usage 
des premiers ? N'exercez done pas seulement les forces, exercez tous les 
sens qui les dirigent ; tirez de chacun d'eux tout le parti possible, puis 
verifiez I'impression de I'un par I'autre. Mesurez, comptez, pesez, 
comparez." Em. ij., 133. 



262 ROUSSEAU. 



Drawing from objects. Morals. 

Les enfants, grands imitateurs, essayent tous de dessiner : 
je voudrais que le mien cultivat cet art, non precisement 
pour I'art meme, mais pour se rendre I'oeil juste et la 
main flexible." {Em. ij., 149). But Emile is to be* kept 
clear of the ordinary drawing-master who would put him 
to imitate imitations ; and there is a striking contrast be- 
tween Rousseau's suggestions and those of the authorities 
at South Kensington. Technical skill he cares for less 
than the training of the eye ; so Emile is always to draw 
from the object, and, says Rousseau, " my intention is not 
so much that he should get to imitate the objects, as get to 
fino7v them : mon intention n'est pas tant qu'il sache imiter 
les objets que les connaitre." {Em. ij,, 150). 

§ 27. Before we pass the age of twelve years, at which 
point, as someone says, Rousseau substitutes another Emile 
for the one he has hitherto spoken of, let us look at his 
proposals for moral training. Rousseau is right, beyond 
question, in desiring that children should be treated as 
children. But what are children ? What can they under- 
stand ? What is the world in which they live ? Is it the 
material world only, or is the moral world also open to 
them? (Girardin's R., vol. ij., 136). On the subject of 
morals Rousseau seems to have admirable instincts,* but 

* E.g. — What can be better than this about family life ? "L'attrait 
de la vie domestique est le meilleur contrepoison des mauvaises moeurs. 
Le tracas des enfants qu'on croit importun devient agreable ; il r<nJ 
le pere et la mere plus necessaires, plus chers I'un k I'autre ; il resserre 
cntre eux le lien conjugal. Quand la famille est vivante et animee, les 
soins domestiques font la plus chere occupation de la femme et le plus 
doux amusement du mari. Ainsi de ce seul abus corrige resulterait 
hientot une reforme generale ; bientot la nature aurait repris tous ses 
droits. Qu'une fois les femmes redeviennent m^res bientot les hommes 
redeviendront percs et maris." £in. j., 17. Again he says in a lettei 



ROUSSEAU. 263 



Contradictory statements on morals. 

no principles, and moral as he is ''on instinct," there is 
always some confusion in what he says. At one time he 
asserts that " there is only one knowledge to give children, 
and that is a knowledge of duty : " II n'y a qu'une science h 
enseigner aux enfants : c'est celle des devoirs de rhommc." 
{E/n. j., 26). Elsewhere he says: '*To know right from 
wrong, to be conscious of the reason of duty is not the 
business of a child : Connaitre le bien et le mal, sentir la 
raison des devoirs de I'homme, n'est pas I'affaire d'un 
enfant." {£m. ij., 75).* In another place he mounts his 
hobby that " the most sublime virtues are negative " {£f/2. 
ij., 95), and that about the best man who ever lived (till he 
found Friday ?) was Robinson Crusoe. The outcome of all 
Rousseau's teaching on this subject seems that we should in 

quoted by Saint-Marc Girardin {ij., 121) — " L'habitude la plus douce 
qui puisse exister est celle de la vie donieslique qui nous tient plus pres 
de nous qu'aucune autre." We may say of Rousseau what Emile says 
of the Corsair : — " II savait a fond toute la morale ; il n'y avait que la 
pratique qui lui manquat." {£;«. £/ S. 636). And yet he himself testi- 
fies : — " Nurses and mothers become attached to children by the cares 
they devote to them ; it is the exercise of the social virtues that carries 
the love of humanity to the bottom of our hearts ; it is in doing good 
that one becomes good ; I know no experience more certain than this : 
Les nourrices, les meres, s'attachent aux enfants par les soins qu'elles 
leur rendent ; I'exercice des vertus sociales porte au fond des coeurs 
I'amour de I'humanite ; c'est en faisant le bien qu't.n devient bon ; je 
ne connais point de pratique plus sure." £m. iv, 291. 

* Elsewhere he asserts in his fithil way that there is inborn in the 
heart of man a feeling of what is just and unjust. Again, after all his 
praise of negation he contradicts himself, and says : " I do not suppose 
that he who does not need anything can love anything ; and I do not 
suppose that he who does not love anything can be happy : Je ne con- 
jois pas que celui qui n'a besoin de rien puisse aimer quelque chose ; 
je ne consols pas que celui qui n'aime rien puisse etre heureux " £m. 
iv, 252. 



264 ROUSSEAU. 



The material world and the moral. 

every way develop the child's animal or physical life, retard 
his intellectual life, and ignore his life as a spiritual and 
moral being. 

§ 28. A variety of influences had combined, as they 
combme still, to draw attention away from the importance 
of physical training ; and by placing the child's bodily 
organs and senses as the first things to be thought of in 
education, Rousseau did much to save us from the bad 
tradition of the Renascence. But there were more things 
in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy, 
and whatever Rousseau might say, Emile could never be 
restrained from inquiring after them. Every boy will think; 
i.e., he will \\\\x^ for himself ^ however unable he may seem 
to think in the direction in which his instructors try to 
urge him. The wise elders who have charge of him 
must take this into account, and must endeavour to guide 
him into thinking modestly and thinking right. Then 
again, as soon as the child can speak, or before, the world 
(jf sensation becomes for him a world, not of sensations 
only, but also of sentiments, of sympathies, of affections, 
of consciousness of right and wrong, good and evil. All 
these feelings, it is true, may be affected by traditional 
prejudices. The air the child breathes may also contain 
much that is noxious ; but we have no more power to 
exclude the atmosphere of the moral world than of the 
physical. All we can do is to take thought for fresh air 
in both cases. As for Rousseau's notion that we can 
withdraw the child from the moral atmosphere, we see in 
it nodimg but a proof how little he understood the problems 
he professed to solve.* 

* Thfs part of Rousseau's scheme is well discussed by Saint-Marc 
Girardin {f. J. Rousseau, vol. ij.). The following passage is striking; 



ROUSSEAU. 265 



Shun over-directing. 



§ 29. Although the governor is to devote himself to 
a single child, Rousseau is careful to protest against over- 
direction. "You would stupify the child," says he, "if you 
were constantly directing him, if you were always saying to 
him, ' Come here ! Go there ! Stop ! Do this ! Don't 
do that ! ' If your head always directs his arms, his own 
Iwad becomes useless to him." {Em. ij., 114). Here we 
have a warning which should not be neglected by those 
who maintain the Lycees in France, and the ordinary private 
boarding-schools in England. In these schools a boy is 
hardly called upon to exercise his will all day long. He 
rises in the morning when he must ; at meals he eats till 
he is obliged to stop ; he is taken out for exercise like a 
horse ; he has all his indoor work prescribed for him both 
as to time and quantity. In this kind of life he never has 
occasion to think or act for himself He is therefore without 
self reliance. So much care is taken to prevent his doing 
wrong, that he gets to think only of checks from without. 
He is therefore incapable of self-restraint. In the English 
public schools boys have much less supervision from their 
elders, and organise a great portion of their lives for them- 

" How is it that Madame Necker-Saussure understood the child better 
than Rousseau did ? She saw in the child two things, a creation and 
a ground-plan, something finished and something begun, a perfection 
which prepares the way for another perfection, a child and a man. 
God, Who has put together human life in several pieces, has willed, 
it is true, that all these pieces should be related to each other ; but He 
has also willed that each of them should be complete in itself, so that 
every stage of life has what it needs as the object of that period, and 
also what it needs to bring in the period that comes next. Wonderful 
union of aims and means which shews itself at every step in creation ! 
In everything there is aim and also means, everything exists for itself 
*nd also for that which lies beyond it ! (Tout est but et tout est moyen ; 
tout est absolu et tout est relatif. )" J. J. R., ij., 151. 



266 ROUSSEAU. 



Lessons out of school. Questioning:. At 12. 

selves. This proves a better preparation for life after the 
school age ; and most public schoolmasters would agree with 
Rousseau that "the lessons the boys get from each other 
in the playground are a hundred times more useful to them 
than the lessons given them in school : les legons que Ics 
ecoliers prennent entre eux dans la cour du college leur sont 
cent fois plus utiles que tout ce qu'on leur dira jamais dans 
la classe." {J^m. ij., 123.) 

§ 30. On questions put by children, Rousseau says : 
"The art of questioning is not so easy as it may be 
thought ; it is rather the art of the master than of the pupil. 
We must have learnt a good deal of a thing to be able to 
ask what we do not know. The learned know and inquire, 
says an Indian proverb, but the ignorant know not what to 
inquire about." And from this he infers that children learn 
less from asking than from being asked questions. {N. H.^ 
5th P. 490.) 

§ 31. At twelve years old Emile is said to be fit for 
mstruction. " Now is the time for labour, for instruction, 
for study ; and observe that it is not I who arbitrarily make 
this choice ; it is pointed out to us by Nature herself." 

§ 32. What novelties await us here? As we have seen 
Rousseau was determined to recommend nothing that 
would harmonise with ordinary educational practice ; but 
even a genius, though he may abandon previous practice, 
cannot keep clear of previous thought, and Rousseau's plan 
for instruction is obviously connected with the thoughts of 
Montaigne and of Locke. But while on the same lines 
with these great writers Rousseau goes beyond them and is 
both clearer and bolder than they are. 

§ 33. Rousseau's proposals for instruction have the fol« 
lowing main features. 



ROUSSEAU. 267 



No book-learning. Study of Nature. 

ist. Instruction is to be no longer literary or linguistic. 
The teaching about words is to disappear, and the young 
are not to learn by books or about books. 

2nd. The subjects to be studied are to be mathematics 
and physical science. 

3rd. The method to be adopted is not the didactic but 
the method of self-teaching. 

4th. The hands are to be called into play as a means of 
learning. 

§ 34. I St. Till quite recently the only learning ever given 
in schools was book-learning, a fact to which the language of 
the people still bears witness : when a child does not profit 
by school instruction he is always said to be " no good at his 
book." Now-a-days the tendency is to change the character 
of the schools so that they may become less and less mere 
" Ludi Literarii." In this Rousseau seems to have been a 
century and more in advance of us ; and yet we cannot 
credit him with any remarkable wisdom or insight about 
literature. He himself used books as a means of "collecting 
a store of ideas, true or false, but at any rate clear" (J. 
Morley's Rousseau^ j. chap. 3, p. 85), and he has recorded 
for us Ills opinion that " the sensible and interesting con- 
versations of a young woman of merit are more proper to 
form a young man than all the pedantical philosophy of 
books" {Confessions, quoted by Morley j., 87). After this, 
whatever we may think of the merit of his suggestions we 
can sit at the Sage's feet no longer. 

§ 35. 2nd. Rousseau had himself little knowledge of 
mathematics and natural science, but he was strongly in 
favour of the "study of Nature"; and in his last years his 
devotion to botany became a passion. His curriculum fur 
^mile is in the air, but the chief thing is to get him to 



268 ROUSSEAU. 



Against didactic teaching. 



attend to the phenomena of nature, and "to foster hig 
curiosity by being in no hurry to satisfy it." 

§ 36. 3rd. About teaching and learning, there is one 
point on which we find a consensus of great authorities ex- 
lending from the least learned of writers who was probably 
Rousseau to the most learned who was probably Friedrich 
August Wolf In one form or other these assert that there 
is no true teaching but se/f-teaching. 

Past a doubt the besetting weakness of teachers is " tell- 
ing." They can hardly resist the tendency to be didactic. 
They have the knowledge which they desire to find in their 
pupils,and they cannot help expressing it and endeavouring 
to pass it on to those who need it, " like wealthy men who 
care not how they give." But true "teaching," as Jacotot and 
his disciple Joseph Payne were never tired of testifying, is 
" causing to learn," and it is seldom that " didactic " teaching 
has this effect. Rousseau saw this clearly, and clearly pointed 
out the danger of didacticism. As usual he by exaggeration 
laid himself open to an answer that seems to refute him, but 
in spite of this we feel that there is valuable truth underlying 
what he says. "I like not explanations given in long dis- 
courses," says he ; "young people pay little attention to them 
and retain little from them. The things themselves ! The 
things themselves ! I shall never repeat often enough that we 
attach too much importance to words : with our chattering 
education we make nothing but chatterers."* Accordingly 
Rousseau lays down the rule that Emile is not to learn 

* " Je n'aime point les explications en discours ; les jeunes gens y font 
pen d'attention et ne les retiennent guere. Les choses! les choses ! Jc 
ne repeterai jamais assez que nous donnons trop de pouvoir aux mots : 
avec notre education babillaide nous ne faisons que des babillards." 
^m. iij., 198. 



ROUSSEAU. 269 



R. exaggerates about self-teaching. 

science but to invent it (qu'il n'apprenne pas la science ; qu'il 
I'invente) ; and he even expects him to invent geometry. 
As Emile is not supposed to be a young Pascal but only an 
ordinary boy with extraordinary //^j'^zVa/ development such 
a requirement is obviously absurd, and Herbart has reckoned 
it among Rousseau's Hauptfehler {Pad. Schriften, ij., 242). 
The training prescribed is in fact the training of the intellec- 
tual athlete ; and the trainer may put the body through its 
exercises much more easily than the mind. Of this the 
practical teacher is only too conscious, and he will accept 
Rousseau's advice, if at all, only as " counsels of perfection." 
Rousseau says : " Emile, obliged to learn of himself, makes 
use of his own reason and not that of others ; for to give 
no weight to opinion, none must be given to authority ; and 
the more part of our mistakes come less from ourselves than 
from other people. From this constant exercise there should 
result a vigour of mind like that which the body gets from 
labour and fatigue. Another advantage is that we advance 
only in proportion to our strength. The mind like the body 
carries that only which it can carry. When the under- 
standing makes things its own before they are committed 
to memory, whatever it afterwards draws forth belongs to it ; 
but if the memory is burdened with what the understanding 
knows nothing about we are in danger of bringing from it 
things which the understanding declines to acknowledge."* 



* " Yorc€ d'apprendre de lui-meme, il use de sa raison et non de celle 
d'autiui ; car, pour ne rien donner k I'opinion, il ne faut rien donner k 
I'autorite ; et la plupart de nos erreurs nous viennent bien moins de 
nous que des autres. De cet exercice continual il doit resulter una 
vigueur d'esprit semblable k celle qu'on donne au corps par le travail et 
par la fatigue. Un autre avantage est qu'on n'avance qu'a proportion 
de ses forces. L'esprit, non plus que le corps, ne porte que ce qu'il peut 



270 ROUSSEAU. 



Learn with effort. 



Again he writes : " Beyond contradiction we get much move 
clear and certain notions of the things we learn thus of our- 
selves than of those we derive from other people's instruction, 
and besides not accustoming our reason to bow as a slave 
before authority, we become more ingenious in finding con- 
nexions, in uniting ideas, and in inventing our implements, 
than when we take all that is given us and let our minds sink 
into indifference, like the body of a man who always has his 
clothes put on for him, is waited on by his servants and 
drawn about by his horses till at length he loses the strength 
and use of his limbs. Boileau boasted of having taught 
Racine to find difficulty in rhyming. Among all the admirable 
methods of shortening the study of the sciences we might 
have need that some one should give us a way of learning 
them with effort:''^ 

§ 37. 4th. However highly we may value our gains 
from the use of books we must admit that in some ways the 

porter. Quand I'entendement s'approprie les choses avant de les deposer 
dans la memoiie, ce qu'il en tire ensuite est a lui : au lieu qu'en surchar- 
geant la niemoire, \ son insu, on s'expose a n'en jamais rien tirer qui 
lui soit propre." J^w. iij., 235. 

* '* Sans contredit on prend des notions bien plus claires et bien plus 
sures des choses qu'on apprend ainsi de soi-meme, que de celles qu'on 
tient des enseignements d'autiui ; et, outre qu'on n'accoutuTie point sa 
raison ase soumettre servilement k I'autorite, Ton se rend plusingenieux 
k tiouver des rapports, k lier des idees, a inventer des instruments, que 
quand, adoptant tout cela tel qu'on nous le donne, nous laissons affai^ser 
notre esprit dans la nonchalance, comme le corps d'un homme qui, 
toujours hfibille, chausse, servi par ses gens et traine par ses chevaux, 
perd k la fin la force et I'usage de ses membres. Boileau se vantait 
d'avoir appris a Racine \ rimer difficilement. Parmi tant d'admirables 
methodes pour abreger I'etude des sciences, nous aurions grand besoin 
que quelqu'un nous en donnat une pour les apprendre avec effort." 
t,m. iij., 193. 



ROUSSEAU. 271 



Hand-work. The "New Education." 

use of books tends to the neglect of powers that should not 
be neglected. As Rousseau wished to see the young 
brought up without books he naturally looked to other means 
of learning, especially to learning by the eye and by the 
hand. Much is now said about using the hand for educa- 
tion, and many will agree with Rousseau : " If instead of 
ir.aking a child stick to his books I employ him in a work- 
shop, his hands work to the advantage of his intellect : he 
becomes a philosopher while he thinks he is becoming 
simply an artisan : Au lieu de coller un enfant sur des livres, 
si je I'occupe dans un atelier, ses mains travaillent au profit 
de son esprit : il devient philosophe, et croit n'etre qu'un 
ouvrier," {^?fi. iij., 193). 

§ 38. In these essays I have done what I could to shew 
the best that each reformer has left us. In Rousseau's case 
I have been obliged to confine myself to his words. " We 
attach far too much importance to words," said Rousseau, 
and yet it is by words and words only that Rousseau still 
lives ; and for the sake of his words we forget his deeds. Of 
the Emile Mr. Morley says : " It is one of the seminal 
books in the history of literature. It cleared away the 
accumulation of clogging prejudices and obscure inveterate 
usage which made education one of the dark formalistic arts ; 
and it admitted floods of light and air into tightly-closed 
nurseries and schoolrooms" (Rotisseau/\]., 2i,%). In the 
region of thought it set us free from the Renascence ; and 
it did more than this, it announced the true nature of the 
teacher's calling, " Study the subject you have to act upo?!." In 
these words we have the starting point of the "New 
Education." From them the educator gets a fresh conception 
of his task. We grown people have received innumerable 
impressions which, forgotten as they are, have left their mark 



72 ROUSSEAU. 



The Teacher's business. 



behind in our way of looking at things ; and as we advance 
in life these experiences and associations cluster around 
everything to which we direct our attention, till in the end 
tlie past seems to dominate the present and to us " nothing is 
but what is not." But to the child the present with its 
revelations and the future which will be " something more, 
a bringer of new things," are all engrossing. It is our 
business as teachers to try to realize how the world looks 
from the child's point of view. We may know a great many 
things and be ready to teach them, but we shall have little 
success unless we get another knowledge which we cannot 
teach and can learn only by patient observation, a know- 
ledge of " the subject to be acted on," of the mind of our 
pupils and what goes on there. When we set out on this 
path, which was first clearly pointed out by Rousseau, 
teaching becomes a new occupation with boundless 
possibilities and unceasing interest in it Every teacher 
becomes a learner, for we have to study the minds of the 
young, their way of looking at things, their habits, their 
difficulties, their likes and dislikes, how they are stimulated 
to exertion, how they are dfscouraged, how one mood 
succeeds another. What we need we may well devote a 
lifetime to acquiring ; it is a knowledge of the human mind 
with the object of influencing it 



XV. 

BASEDOW AND THE PHILAN- 
THROPINUM. 



§ T. One of the most famous movements ever made in 
educational reform was started in the last century by John 
Bernard Basedow. Basedow was born at Hamburg in 1723, 
the son of a wigmaker. His early years were not spent in the 
ordinary happiness of childhood. His mother he describes 
as melancholy, almost to madness, and his father was severe 
almost to brutality. It was the father's intention to bring 
up his son to his own business, but the lad ran away, and 
engaged himself as servant to a gentleman in Holstein. The 
master soon perceived what had never occurred to the 
father, viz., that the youth had very extraordinary abilities. 
Sent home with a letter from his master pointing out this 
notable discovery, Basedow was allowed to renounce the 
paternal calling, and to go to the Hamburg Grammar School 
( Gymnasium), where he was under Reimarus, the author of 
the " Wolfenbiittel Fragment." In due course his friends 
managed to send him to the University of Leipzig to prepare 
iiiinself for the least expensive of the learned professions — 
the cleiical. Basedow, however, was not a man to follow 
the beaten tracks. After an irregular life he left the univer- 
sity too unorthodox to think of being ordained, and in 1740 
became private tutor to the children of Herr von Quaalea 

T 



274 BASEDOW. 



B. tries to mend religion and teaching. 

in Holstein. In this situation his talent for inventing new 
methods of teaching first sliowed itself. He knew how to 
idapt himself to the capacity of the children, and he taught 
them much by conversation, and in the way of play, con- 
necting his instruction with surrounding objects in the house, 
garden, and fields. Through Quaalen's influence, he next 
obtained a professorship at Soroe, in Denmark, where he 
lectured for eight years, but his unorthodox writings raised a 
storm of opposition, and the Government finally removed 
him to the Gymnasium at Altona. Here he still continued 
his efforts to change the prevailing opinions in religious 
matters ; and so great a stir was made by the publication of 
his "Philalethia," and his "Methodical Instruction in both 
Natural and Biblical Religion," that he and his fomily were 
refused the Communion at Altona, and his books were 
excluded, under a heavy penalty, from Liibcck. 

§ 2. About this time Basedow, incited by Rousseau's 
" Emile," turned his attention to a fresh field of activity, in 
which he was to make as many friends as in theology he 
had found enemies. A very general dissatisfaction was then 
felt with the condition of the schools. Physical education 
was not attempted in them. The mother-tongue was 
neglected. Instruction in Latin and Greek, which was the 
only instruction given, was carried on in a mechanical way, 
without any thought of improvement. The education of the 
poor and of the middle classes received but little attention. 
" Youth," says Raumer, " was in those days, for most 
children, a sadly harassed period. Instruction was hard and 
heartlessly severe. Grammar was caned into the memory, 
so were portions of Scripture and poetry. A common school 
punishment was to learn by heart Psalm cxix. School- 
rooms were dismally dark. No one conceived it possible 



BASEDOW. 275 



Reform needed. Subscription for "Elementary." 

that the young could find pleasure in any kind of work, or 
that they had eyes for aught besides reading and writing. 
The pernicious age of Louis XIV. had inflicted on the poor 
children of the upper class, hair curled by the barber and 
messed with powder and pomade, braided coats, knee 
breeches, silk stockings, and a dagger by the side — for active, 
lively children a perfect torture" {Gesch. d. Fiidagogik, ii. 
297). Kant gave expression to a very wide-spread feeling 
when he said that what was wanted in education was no 
longer a reform but a revolution. Here, then, was a good 
scope offered for iniftvators, and Basedow was a prince of 
innovators. 

§ 3. Having succeeded in interesting the Danish 
minister, Bernstorff, in his plans, he was permitted to devote 
himself entirely to- a work on the subject of education 
whilst retaining his income from the Altona Gymnasium. 
The result was his " Address to Philanthropists and Men of 
Property on Schools and Studies and their Influence on the 
Public Weal " (1766), in which he announces the plan of his 
"Elementary."* In this address he calls upon princes, 
governments, town-councils, dignitaries of the Church, 
freemasons' lodges, &c., &c,, if they loved their fellow- 
creatures, to come to his assistance in bringing out his 
book. Nor did he call in vain. When the " Elementary " 
at length appeared (in 1774), he had to acknowledge 
contributions from the Emperor Joseph IL, from Catherme 
II. of Russia, from Christian VII. of Denmark, from the 
Grand Prince Paul, and many other celebrities, the total 
sum leceived being over 2,000/. 



^* I avail myself of the old substantival use of the word elementary to 
express its German equivalent Elementarbuch, 



276 BASEDOW. 



A journey with Goethe. 



§ 4. While Basedow was travelling about (in 1774) to get 
subscriptions, he spent some time in Frankfurt, and thence 
made an excursion to Emswith two distinguishedcompanions, 
one of them Lavater, and the other a young man of five- 
and-twenty, already celebrated as the author of " G5tz von 
Berlichingen," and the "Sorrows of Werther." Of Basedow's 
personal peculiarities at this time Goethe has left us an 
amusing description in the " Wahrheit und Dichtung ;" but 
we must accept the portrait with caution : the sketch was 
thrown in as an artistic contrast with that of T^avater, and no 
doubt exaggerates those features in \-hich the antithesis 
could be brought out with best effect. 

" One could not see," writes Goethe, " a more marked 
contrast than between Lavater and Basedow. As the lines 
of Lavater's countenance were free and open to the beholder, 
so were Basedow's contracted, and as it were drawn inwards, 
Lavater's eye, clear and benign, under a very wide eyelid; 
Basedow's, on the other hand, deep in his head, small, black, 
sharp, gleaming out from under shaggy eyebrows, whilst 
Lavater's frontal bone seemed bounded by two arches of the 
softest brown hair. Basedow's impetuous rough voice, his 
rapid and sharp utterances, a certain derisive laugh, an 
abrupt changing of the topic of conversation, and whatever 
else distinguished him, all were opposed to the peculiarities 
and the behaviour by which Lavater had been making us 
over-fastidious." 

§ 5. Goethe approved of Basedow's desire to make all 
instruction lively and natural, and thought that his system 
would promote mental activity and give the young a fresher 
view of the world : but he finds fault with the "Elementary," 
and prefers the "Orbis Pictus" of Comenius, in which 
subjects are presented in their natural connection. Base- 



BASEDOW. 277 



Goethe on Basedow. 



dow himself, says Goethe, was not a man either to edify or 
to lead other people. Although the object of his journey 
was to interest the public in his philanthropic enterprise, 
and to open not only hearts but purses, and he was able to 
speak eloquently and convincingly on the subject of 
education, he spoilt everything by his tirades against 
prevalent religious belief, especially on the subject of the 
Trinity. 

§ 6. Goethe found in Basedow's society an opportunity 
of " exercising, if not enlightening," his mind, so he bore 
with his personal peculiarities, though apparently with great 
difficulty. Basedow seems to have delighted in worrying 
his associates. " He would never see anyone quiet but he 
provoked him with mocking irony, in a hoarse voice, or put 
him to confusion by an unexpected question, and laughed 
bitterly when he had gained his end ; yet he was pleased 
when the object of his jests was quick enough to collect 
himself, and answer in the same strain." So far Goethe was 
his match ; but he was nearly routed by Basedow's use of 
bad tobacco, and of some tinder still worse with which he 
was constantly lighting his pipe and poisoning the air 
insufferably. He soon discovered Goethe's dislike to this 
preparation of his, so he took a malicious pleasure in using 
it and dilating upon its merits. 

§ 7. Here is an odd account of their intercourse. 
During their stay at Ems Goethe went a great deal into 
fashionable society. " To make up for these dissipations," 
he writes, " I always passed a part of the . night with 
Basedow. He never went to bed, but dictated without 
cessation. Occasionally he cast himself on the couch and 
slumbered, while his amanuensis sat quietly, pen in hand, 
ready to continue his work when the half-awakened author 



278 BASEDOW. 



The Philanthropinum opened. 



should once more give free course to his thoughts. All this 
took place in a close confined chainher, filled with the 
fumes of tobacco and the odious tinder. As often as I was 
disengaged from a dance I hastened up to Basedow, who 
was ready at once to speak and dispute on any question ; 
and when after a time I hurried again to the ball-room, 
before I had closed the door behind me he would resume 
the thread of his essay as composedly as if he had been 
engaged with nothing else." 

§ 8. It was through a friend of Goethe's, Behrisch, 
whose acquaintance we make in the " Wahrheit und 
Dichtung," that Basedow became connected with Prince 
Leopold of Dessau. Behrisch was tutor to the Prince's 
son, and by him the Prince was so interested in Basedow's 
plans that he determined to found an Institute in which 
they should be realised. Basedow was therefore called to 
Dessau, and under his direction was opened the famous 
Philanthropinum. Then for the first, and probably for the 
last time, a school was started in which use and wont 
were entirely set aside, and everything done on " improved 
principles." Such a bold enterprise attracted the attention 
of all interested in education, far and near: but it would 
seem that few parents considered their own children vilia 
corpora on whom experiments m.ight be made for the public 
good. When, in May 1776, a number of schoolmasters 
and others collected from different parts of Germany, and 
even from beyond Germany, to be present by Basedow's 
mvitation at an examination of the children, they found 
only thirteen pupils in the Philanthropinum, including 
Basedow's own son and daughter. 

§ 9. Before we investigate how Basedow's principles were 
embodied in the Philanthropinum, let us see the form in 



BASEDOW. 279 



B.'s " Elementary " and " Book of Method." 

which he had already announced them. The great work 
from which all children were to be taught was the 
" Elementary." As a companion to this was published 
the " Book of Method " {MetJwdtmbucJi) for parents and 
teachers. The " Elementary " is a work in which a great 
deal of information about things in general is given in the 
form of dialogue, interspersed with tales and easy poetry. 
Except in bulk, it does not seem to me to differ very 
materially from many of the reading-books, which, in late 
years, have been published in this country. It had the 
advantage, however, of being accompanied by a set of 
engravings to which the text referred, though they were too 
large to be bound up with it. The root-ideas of Basedow 
put forth in his " Book of Method," and other writings, are 
those of Rousseau. For example, " You should attend to 
nature in your children far more than to art, The elegant 
manners and usages of the world are for the most part 
unnatural {Utinatur). These come of themselves in later 
years. Treat children like children, that they may remain 
the longer uncorrupted. A boy whose acutest faculties are 
his senses, and who has no perception of anything abstract, 
must first of all be made acquainted with the world as it 
presents itself to the senses. Let this be shown him in 
nature herself, or where this is impossible, in faithful 
drawmgs or models. Thereby can he, even in play, learn 
how the various objects are to be named. Comenius alone 
has pointed out the right road in this matter. By all 
means reduce the wretched exercises of the memory." 
Elsewhere he gives instances of the sort of things to which 
this method should be applied. ist. Man. Here he 
would use pictures of foreigners and wild men, also a 
skeleton, a hand in spirits, and other objects still more 



280 BASEDOW. 



Subjects to be taught. 



appropriate to a surgical museum. 2nd. Animals. Only 
such animals are to be depicted as it is useful to know 
about, because there is much that ought to be known, and a 
good method of instruction must shorten rathei than 
increase the hours of study. Articles of commerce made 
from the animals may also be exhibited. 3rd. Trees and 
plants. Only the most important are to be selected. Of 
these the seeds also must be shown, and cubes formed of 
the different woods. Gardeners' and farmers' implements 
are to be explained. 4th. Minerals and chemical sub- 
stances. 5th. Maihematical instruments for weighing and 
measuring ; also the air-pump, siphon, and the like. The 
form and motion of the earth are to be explained with 
globes and maps. 6th. Trades. The use of various tools 
is to be taught. 7th. History. This is to be illustrated by 
engravings of historical events. 8th. Commerce. Samples 
of commodities may be produced. 9th. The younger 
children should be shown pictures of familiar objects about 
the house and its surroundings. 

§ 10. We see from this list that Basedow contemplated 
giving his educational course the charm of va'iety. 
Indeed, with that candour in acknowledging mistakes which 
partly makes amends foi; the effrontery too common in the 
trumpetings of his own performances, past, present, and to 
come, he confesses that when he began the " Elementary " 
he had exaggerated notions of the amount boys were 
capable of learning, and that he had subsequently very 
much contracted his proposed curriculum. And even '' the 
Revolution," which was to introduce so much new learning 
into the schools, could not afford entirely to neglect the 
old. However pleased parents might be with the novel 
acquirements of their children, they were not likely to be 



BASEDOW. 281 



French and Latin. Religion. 



satisfied without the usual knowledge of Latin, and still 
k.ss would they tolerate the neglect of French, which in 
German pohte society of the eighteenth century was the 
recognised substitute for the vulgar tongue. These, then, 
must be taught. But the old methods might be abandoned, 
if not the old subjects. Basedow proposed to teach both 
French and Latin by conversation. Let a cabinet of models, 
or something of the kind, be shown the children ; let them 
learn the names of the different objects in Latin or French ; 
then let questions be asked in those languages, and the 
right answers at first put into the children's mouths. When 
they have in this way acquired some knowledge of the 
language, they may apply it to the translating of an easy 
book. Basedow does not claim originality for the conver- 
sational method. He appeals to the success with which it 
had been already used in teaching French. "Are the 
French governesses," he asks, " who, without vocabularies 
and grammars, first by conversation, then by reading, teach 
their language very successfully and very rapidly in schools 
of from thirty to forty children, better teachers than most 
masters in our Latin schools?" 

§ II. On the subject of religion the instruction was to 
be quite as original as in matters of less importance. The 
teachers were lo give an impartial account of all religions, 
and nothing but " natural religion " was to be inculcated, 

§ 12. The key-note of the whole system was to be — 
everythifig according to nature. The natural' desires and 
inclinations of the children were to be educated and 
directed aright, but in no case to be suppressed. 

§ 13. These, then, were the principles and the methods 
which, as Basedow believed, were to revolutionise education 
through the success of the Philanthropinum. Basedow 



282 BASEDOW. 



"Fred's Journey to Dessau." 



himself, as we might infer from Goethe's description of him, 
was by no means a model director for the model Institution, 
but he was fortunate in his assistants. Of these he had 
three at the time of the public examination, of whom Wolke 
is said to have been the ablest. 

§ 14. A lively description of the examination was after- 
wards published by Herr Schummel of Magdeburg, under 
the title of " Fred's Journey to Dessau." It purports to be 
written by a boy of twelve years old, and to describe 
what took place without attempting criticism. A few 
extracts will give us a notion of the instruction carried on in 
the Philanthropin. 

" I have just come from a visit with my father to the 
Philanthropinum, where I saw Herr Basedow, Herr Wolke, 
Herr Simon, Herr Schweighauser, and the little Philan- 
thropinists. I am delighted with all that I have seen, and 
hardly know where to begin my description of it. There 
are two large white houses, and near them a field with trees. 
A pupil — not one of the reguLor scholars, but of those they 
call Famulants (a poorer class, who were servitors) — 
received us at the door, and asked if we wished to see 
Herr Basedow. We said ' Yes,' and he took us into the 
other house, where we found Herr Basedow in a dressing- 
gown, writing at a desk. We came at an inconvenient time, 
and Herr Basedow said he was very busy. He was very 
friendly, however, and promised to visit us in the evening. 
We then went into the other house, and enquired for Herr 
Wolke." By him they were taken to the scholars. " They 
have," says Fred, "their hair cut very short, and no wig- 
maker is employed. Their throats are quite open, and 
their shirt-collars fall back over their coats." Further 
on he describes the examination. " The little ones have 



BASEDOW. 283 



At the Philanthropinum. 



gone through the oddest performances. They play at 
'word of command.' Eight or ten stand in a line like 
soldiers, and Herr Wolke is officer. He gives the word in 
Latin, and they must do whatever he says. For iniitance, 
when he says Clauditeoculos, they all shut their eyes; when 
he says Circumspicite, they look about them ; Iniitamini 
sartorem, they all sew like tailors ; hnitamini snioreffi, they 
draw the waxed thread like the cobblers. Herr Wolke gives 
a thousand different commands in the drollest fashion. 
Another game, ' the hiding game,' I will also teach you. 
Some one writes a name, and hides it from the children — 
the name of some part of the body, or of a plant, or animal, 
or metal — and the children guess what it is. Whoever 
guesses right gets an apple or a piece of cake. One of the 
visitors wrote Intesiina, and told the children it was a part 
of the body. Then the guessing began. One guessed 
caput, another nastis, another os, another inanus, pes, digiti, 
pectus, and so forth, for a long time ; but one of them hit it 
at last. Next Herr Wolke wrote the name of a beast, a 
quadruped. Then came the guesses : leo, iirsus, catnehis, 
elephas, and so on, till one guessed right — it was mus. Then 
a town was written, and they guessed Lisbon, Madrid, 
Paris, London, till a child won with St. Petersburg. They 
had another game, which was this : Herr Wolke gave the 
command in Latin, and they imitated the noises of different 
animals, and made us laugh till we were tired. They roared 
like lions, crov/ed like cocks, mewed like cats, just as they 
were bid." 

§ 15. The subject that was next handled had also the 
effect of making the strangers laugh, till a severe reproof 
from Herr Wolke restored their gravity. A picture was 
brought, in which was represented a sad-looking woman, 



284 BASEDOW. 



Methods in the Philanthropinum. 

whose person indicated the approaching arrival of another 
subject for education. From one part of the picture it also 
appeared that the prospective mother, with a prodigality of 
forethought, had got ready clothing for both a boy and a 
girl. After a warning from Herr Wolke, that this was a 
most serious and important subject, the children were 
questioned on the topics the picture suggested. They were 
further taught the debt of gratitude they owed to their 
mothers, and the German fiction about the stork was dis- 
missed with due contempt. 

§ 1 6. Next came the examination in arithmetic. Here 
there seems to have been nothing remarkable, except that 
all the rules were worked viva voce. From the arithmetic 
Herr Wolke went on to an " Attempt at various small 
drawings." He asked the children what he should draw. 
Some one answered leonem. He then pretended he was 
drawing a lion, but put a beak to it ; whereupon the children 
shouted JSfofi est leo — leones non habent rostrum ! He went 
on to other subjects, as the children directed him, sometimes 
going wrong that the children might put him right. In the 
next exercise dice were introduced, and the children threw 
to see who should give an account of an engraving. The 
engravings represented workmen at their different trades, 
and the child had to explain the process, the tools, &c. A 
lesson on ploughing and harrowing was given in French, 
and another, on Alexander's expedition to India, in Latin. 
Four of the pupils translated passages from Curtius and from 
Castalio's Bible, which were read to them. "These chil- 
dren," said the teacher, " knew not a word of Latin a year 
ago." "The listeners were well pleased with the Latin," 
writes Fred, " except two or three, whom I heard grumbling 
that this was all child's play, and that if Cicero, Livy, and 



BASEDOW. 285 



The Philanthropinum criticised. 

Horace were introduced, it would soon be seen what was 
the value of Philanthropinist Latin." After the examifiation, 
two comedies were acted by the children, one in French, 
the other in German. 

Most of the strangers seem to have left Dessau with a 
favourable impression of the Philanthropin. They were 
especially struck with the brightness and animation of the 
children. 

§ 17. How far did the Philanthropinum really deserve 
their good opinion? The conclusion to which we are 
driven by Fred's narrative is, that Basedow carried to excess 
his principle — " Treat children as children, that they may 
remain the longer uncorrupted;" and that the Philan- 
thropinum was, in fact, nothing but a good infant school. 
Surely none of the thirteen children who were the subjects 
of Basedow's experiments could have been more than ten 
years old. But if we consider Basedow's system to have 
been intended for children^ say between the ages of six and 
ten, we must allow that it possessed great merits. At the 
very beginning of a boy's learning, it has always been too 
much the custom to make him hate the sight of a book, and 
escape at every opportunity from school-work, by giving 
him difficult tasks, and neglecting his acutest faculties. 
" Children love motion and noise," says Basedow : " here 
is a hint from nature." Yet the youngest children in most 
schools are expected to keep quiet and to sit at their books 
for as many hours as the youths of seventeen or eighteen. 
Their vivacity is repressed with the cane. Their delight in 
exercising their hands and eyes and ears is taken no notice 
of ; and they are required to keep their attention fixed on 
subjects often beyond their comprehension, and almost 
always beyond the range of their interests. Everyone who 



286 BASEDOW. 



B.'s improvements in teaching children. 

has had experience in teaching boys knows how hard it is to 
get tlfem to throw themselves heartily into any task what- 
ever; and probably this difficulty arises in many cases, 
from the habits of inattention and of shirking school- tvork, 
which the boys have acquired almost necessarily from the 
dreariness of their earliest lessons.* Basedow determined 
to change all this ; and in the Philanthropin no doubt he 
succeeded. We have already seen some of the expedients 
by which he sought to render school-work pleasurable. He 
appealed, wherever it was possible, to the children's senses ; 
and these, especially the sight, were trained with great care 
by exercises, such as drawing, shooting at a mark, &c. One 
of these exercises, intended to give quick perception, bears 
a curious likeness to what has since been practised in a very 
different educational system. A picture, with a somewhat 
varied subject, was exhibited for a short time and removed. 
The boys had then, either verbally or on paper, to give an 
account of it, naming the different objects in proper order. 
Houdin, if I rightly remember, tells us that the young 
thieves of Paris are required by their masters to make a 
mental inventory of the contents of a shop window, which 
they se^ only as they walk rapidly by. Other exercises of 
the Philanthropinum connected the pupils with more 
honourable, callings. They became acquainted with both 

* " Who has not met with some experience such as this ? A child 
with an active and inquirin'^ mind accustomed to chatter about every- 
thing that interests him is sent to school. In a few weeks his vivacity 
is exiinguished, his abundance of talk has dried up. If you ask him 
about his studies, if you desire him to give you a specimen of what he 
has learnt, he repeals to you in a sing-song voice some rule for the for- 
mation of tenses or some recipe for spelling words. Such are the results 
of the teaching which should be of all teaching the most fruitful and the 
most attractive 1 " Translated from Quelques Mots, &c., by M. Breal. 



BASEDOW. 287 



Basedow's successors. 



skilled and unskilled manual labour. Every boy was taught 
a handicraft, such as carpentering and turning, and was put 
to such tasks as threshing corn, Basedow's division of the 
twenty-four hours was the following : Eight hours for sleep, 
eight for food and amusement, and, for the children of 
the rich, six hours of school-work, and two of manual labour. 
In the case of the children of the poor, he would have the 
division of the last eight hours inverted, and would give for 
school-work two, and for manual labour six. The development 
of the body was specially cared for in the Philanthropinum. 
Gymnastics were now first introduced into modern schools ; 
and the boys were taken long expeditions on foot — the 
commencement, I believe, of a practice now common 
throughout Germany. 

§ 18. As I have already said, Basedow proved a very 
unfit person to be at the head of the model Institution. 
Many of his friends agreed with Herder, that he was not fit 
to have calves entrusted to him, much less children. He 
soon resigned his post ; and was succeeded by Campe, who 
had been one of the visitors at the public examination. 
Campe did not remain long at the Philanthropinum ; but 
left it to set up a school, on like principles, at Hamburg. 
His fame now rests on his writings for the young ; one of 
which — " Robinson Crusoe the Younger " — is still a general 
flivourite. 

Other distinguished men became connected with the 
rhihnthropin — among them Salzmann, and Matthison the 
poet — and the number of pupils rose to over fifty; gathered 
we are told, from all parts of Europe between Riga and 
Lisbon. But this number is by no means a fair measure of 
the interest, nay, enthusiasm, which the experiment excited. 
We find Pastor Oberlin raising money on his wife's earrings 



BASEDOW. 



Kant on the Philanthropinum. 



to send a donation. We find the philosopher Kant pro- 
phesying that quite another race of men would grow up, now 
tliat education according to Nature had been introduced. 

§ 19. These hopes were disappointed. Kant confesses 
as much in the following passage in his treatise " On 
Paedagogy " : — 

" One fancies, indeed, that experiments in education 
would not be necessary ; and that we might judge by the 
understanding whether any plan would turn out well or ill. 
But this is a great mistake. Experience shows that often in 
our experiments we get quite opposite results from what we 
had anticipated. We see, too, that since experiments are 
necessary, it is not in the power of one generation to form a 
complete plan of education. The only experimental school 
which, to some extent, made a beginning in clearing the 
road, was the Institute at Dessau. This praise at least must 
be allowed it, notwithstanding the many faults which could 
be brought up against it — faults which are sure to show 
themselves when we come to the results of our experiments, 
and which merely prove that fresh experiments are necessary. 
It was the only School in which the teachers had liberty to 
work according to their own methods and schemes, and 
where they were in free communication both among them- 
selves and with all learned men throughout Germany." 

§ 20. We observe here, that Kant speaks of the Philan- 
thropinum as a thing of the past. It was finally closed in 
1793. But even from Kant we learn that the experiment 
had been by no means a useless one. The conservatives, 
of course, did not neglect to point out that young Philan- 
thropinists, when they left school, were not in all respects 
the superiors of their fellow-creatures. But, although no 
one could pretend that the Philanthropinum had effected a 



BASEDOW. 289 



Influence of Philanthropinists. 



tithe of what Basedow promised, and the " friends of 
humanity" throughout Europe expected, it had introduced 
many new ideas, which in time had their influence, even in 
the schools of the opposite party. Moreover, teachers who 
had been connected with the Philanthropinum founded 
schools on similar principles in different parts of Germany 
and Switzerland, as Bahrd's at Heidesheim, and Salzmann's 
celebrated school at Schnepfenthal, which is, I believe, 
still thriving. Their doctrines, too, made converts among 
other masters, the most celebrated of whom was Meierotto 
of Berlin. 

§ 21. Little remains to be said of Basedow. He lived 
chiefly at Dessau, earning his subsistence by private tuition, 
but giving offence by his irregularities. In 1790, when 
visiting Magdeburg, he died, after a short illness, in his 
sixty -seventh year. His last words were, "I wish my body to 
be dissected for the good of my fellow-creatures." 



Basedow has a posthumous connexion with this country as the great- 
grandfather of Professor Max Miiller. Basedow's son became " Re- 
gierungs Prasident," in Dessau. The President's daughter, born in 
1800, became the wife of the poet Wilhelm Miiller, and the mother of 
Max Miiller. Max Miiller has contributed a life of his great-grand- 
father to the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. 

Those who read German and care about either Basedow or Comenius 
should get Die Didaktik Basedoavs im Vergleiche zur Didaktik des 
Comenius von Dr. Petru Garbovicianu (Bucarest, C. Gobi), 1887. This 
is a very good piece of work ; it is printed in roman type, and the price 
is only is. 6d. 

Since the above was in type I have got an important book, V Educa- 
tion en Allemagne au Dix-huitiime Silcle : Basedow et le Philan- 
tkropinisme, by A. Pinloche (Paris, A. Colin, 18G9.) 



XVI. 

PESTALOZZI. 



1746-1827. 



§ I. Qui facit per alium facit per se. It is thus the law 
holds us accountable for the action of others which we 
direct. By the extension of this rule we immensely in- 
crease the personality of great writers and may credit them 
with vast spheres of action which never come within their 
consciousness. No man gains and suffers more from this 
consideration than Rousseau. On the one hand, we may 
attribute to him the crimes of Robespierre and Saint-Just ; 
on the other Festal ozzi was instigated by him to turn to 
fanning and — education. 

In treating of Rousseau as an educational reformer I 
passed over a life in which almost every incident tends to 
weaken the effect of his words. With Pestalozzi we must 
turn to his life for the true source of his writings and the 
best comment on them. 

§ 2. John Henry Pestalozzi was born at Zurich in 1746. 
His father dying when he was five years old, he was brought 
up with a brother and sister by a pious and self-denying 
mother and by a faithful servant "Babeli," who had com- 
forted the father in his last hours by promising to stay with 
his family. Thus Pestalozzi had an advantage denied to 
Rousseau and denied as it would seem to Locke; there 



PESTALOZZI. 291 



His childhood and student-life. 

was scope for his home affections, and the head was not 
developed before the heart. When he was sent to a day- 
school he became to some extent the laughing stock of his 
companions who dubbed him Harry Oddity of Foolborough ; 
but he gained their good-will by his unselfishness. It was 
remembered that on the shock of an earthquake when 
teachers and taught fled from the school building Harry 
Oddity was induced to go back and bring away what his 
companions considered precious. His holidays he spent 
with his grandfather the pastor of a village some three miles 
from Zurich, where the lad learnt the condition of the 
rural poor and saw what a good man could do for them. 
He always looked back to these visits as an im]:)ortant 
element in his education. " The best way for a child to 
acquire the fear of God," he wrote, " is for him to see and 
hear a true Christian." The grandfather's example so 
affected him that he wished to follow in his steps, and he 
became a student of theology.* . 

§ 3. Even as a student Pestalozzi proved that he was no 
ordinary man. In his time there was great intellectual and 
moral enthusiasm among the students of the little Swiss 
University. Some distinguished professors, especially Bod- 
mer, had awakened a craving for the old Swiss virtues of 
plain living and high thinking; and a band of students, 
among whom Lavater was leader and Pestalozzi played a 
prominent part, became eager reformers. The citizens of 
the great towns like Geneva and Zurich had become in 
effect privileged classes ; and as their spokesmen the Geneva 
magistrates condemned the Contrat Social and the Emik. 

* In these visits he observed how the children suffered from working 
in factories. These observations influenced him in after years. 



292 PESTALOZZI, 



A Radical Student. 



This raised the indignation of the reforming students at 
Zurich ; and though their organ, a periodical called the 
Memorial, kept clear of politics, one MuUer wrote a paper 
which contained some strong language, and this was held 
to be proof of a conspiracy. Muller fled and was banished. 
Pestalozzi and some other of his friends were imprisoned. 
The Memorial was suppressed. 

§ 4. It is in this Memorial, a weekly paper edited by 
Lavater who was five years Pestalozzi's senior that we have 
Pestalozzi's earliest writing. We find him coming forward 
as "a man of aspirations." No one he says can object 
to his expressing his wishes. And " wishes " with a man of 
19 are usually hopes. Among other wishes he says: "I 
would that some one would draw up in a simple manner a 
few principles of education intelligible to everybody ; that 
some generous people would then share the expense of 
printing, so that the pamphlet might be given to the public 
for nothing or next to nothing. I would then have clergy- 
men distribute it to all fathers and mothers, so that they 
might bring up their children in a rational and Christian 
manner. But," he adds, " perhaps this is asking too much 
at a time." 

The Memorial was suppressed because " the privileged 
classes '* knew that it was in the hands of their opponents. 
Pestalozzi then and always felt keenly the oppression to 
which the peasants were exposed ; and he spoke of " the 
privileged " as men on stilts who must descend among the 
people before they could secure a natural and firm position. 
He also satirises them in some of his fables, as, e.g., that of 
the " Fishes and the Pike." " The fishes in a pond 
brought an accusation against the pike who were making 
great ravages among them. The judge, an old pike, said 



PESTAI.OZZI. 293 



Turns farmer. Bluntschli's warning. 

that their complaint was well founded, and that the 
defendants, to make amends, should allow two ordinary 
fish every year to become pike." 

§ 5. By this time Pestalozzi had given up theology and 
had taken to the law. Now under the influence of 
Rousseau, or rather of the craving for a simple " natural " 
life which found its most eloquent expression in Rousseau's 
writing, Pestalozzi made a bonfire of his MSS. and decided 
on becoming a farmer. 

§ 6. There was another person concerned in this decision. 
In his childhood he had one day ventured into the shop of 
one of the leading tradesmen, Herr Schulthess, bent on pro- 
curing for his farthings some object of delight ; but he found 
there a little shop-keeper, Anna Schulthess, seven years his 
senior, who discouraged his extravagance and persuaded 
him to keep his money. Anna and he since those days 
had become engaged — not at all to the satisfaction of 
her parents. Their intimacy had been strengthened by 
their concern for a common friend, a young man named 
Bluntschli, who died of consumption. This friend, three 
years older than Pestalozzi, seems to have understood him 
thoroughly; and in the parting advice he gave him there 
was a warning which happily for the general good was in 
after years neglected. " I am going," said Bluntschli, "and 
you will be left alone. Avoid any career in which you 
might become the victim of your own goodness and trust, 
and choose some quiet life in which you will run no risk. 
Above all, do not take part in any important undertaking 
without having at your side a man who by his cool judg- 
ment, knowledge of men and things, and unshakable 
fidelity may be able to protect you from the dangers to 
which you will be exposed." 



294 PESTALOZZI. 



New ideas in farming. A love-letter. 

§ 7. When the friendship with Anna Schulthess had 
ripened into a betrothal Pestalozzi spent a year in the 
neighbourhood of Bern learning farming under a man then 
famous for his innovations. His new ideas Pestalozzi 
absorbed very readily. " I had come to him," he says, " a 
political visionary, though with many profound and correct 
attainments, views, and anticipations in matters political. 
I went away from him just as great an agricultural visionary, 
though with many enlarged and correct ideas and intentions 
with regard to agriculture." 

§ 8. During his " learning year " he kept up a corre- 
spondence with his betrothed, and the letters of both, which 
have been preserved, diifer very widely from love-letters in 
general. Of himself Pestalozzi gives an account which 
shows that in part at least he could see himself as others 
saw him. " Dearest," he writes, " those of my faults which 
appear to me most important in relation to the situation in 
which I may be placed in after-life are improvidence, 
incautiousness, and a want of presence of mind to meet 
unexpected changes in my prospects. ... Of my 
great, and indeed very reprehensible negligence in all 
matters of etiquette, and generally in all matters which are 
not in themselves of importance, I need not speak ; anyone 
may see them at first sight of me. I also owe you the 
open confession, my dear, that I shall always consider my 
duties toward my beloved partner subordinate to my duties 
towards my country ; and that, although I shall be the 
tenderest husband, nevertheless, I hold myself bound to be 
inexorable to the tears of my wife if she should ever 
attempt to restrain me by them from the direct performance 
of my duties as a citizen, whatever this must lead to. My 
wife shall be the confidante of my heart, the partner of all 



PESTALOZZI. 295 



Resolutions. Buys land and marries. 

my most secret counsels. A great and honest simplicily 
shall reign in my house. And one thing more. My life 
will not pass without important and very critical undertak- 
ings. I shall not forget . . . my first resolutions to 
devote myself wholly to my country. I shall never, from 
fear of man, refrain from speaking when I see that the good 
of my country calls upon me to speak. My whole heart is 
my country's : I will risk all to alleviate the need and 
misery of my fellow-countrymen. What consequences -may 
the undertakings to which I feel myself urged on draw 
after them ! how unequal to them am I ! and how impera- 
tive is my duty to show you the possibility of the great 
dangers which they may bring upon me ! My dear, my 
beloved friend, I have now spoken candidly of my charac- 
ter and my aspirations. Reflect upon everything. If the 
traits which it was my duty to mention diminish your 
respect for me, you will still esteem my sincerity, and you 
will not think less highly of me, that I did not take advan- 
tage of your want of acquaintance with my character for 
the attainment of my inmost wishes." 

§ 9. The young lady addressed was worthy of her lover. 
" Such nobleness, such elevation of character, reach my 
very soul," said she. With equal nobleness she encouraged 
Pestalozzi in his schemes and took the consequences with- 
out a murmur during their long married life of 46 
years. 

§ 10. Full of new ideas about farming Pestalozzi now 
thought he saw his way to making a fortune. He took 
some poor land near Birr not far from Zurich, and per- 
suaded a banking firm to advance money with which he 
proposed to cultivate vegetables and madder. In Sep- 
tember, 1769, he was married, and six months later the 



296 PESTALOZZI. 



P. turns to education. 



pair settled in a new house, "Neuhof," which Pestalozzi 
had built on his land. 

§ II. But in spite of his excellent ideas and great in- 
dustry, his speculation failed. The bankers soon withdrew 
their money. Pestalozzi was not cautious enough for them. 
However, his wife's friends prevented an immediate collapse. 

§ 12. But before he had any reason to doubt the success 
of his speculation Pestalozzi had begun to reproach himself 
with being engrossed by it. What had become of all his 
thoughts for the people ? Was he not spending his strength 
entirely to gain the prosperity of himself and his house- 
hold ? These thoughts came to him with all the more force 
when a son was born to him ; and at this time they natu- 
rally connected themselves with education. He had now 
seen a good deal of the degraded state of the peasantry. 
How were they to be raised out of it? 

§ 13. To Pestalozzi there seemed one answer and one 
only. This was by education. To many people in the present 
day it might seem that " education," when quite successful, 
would qualify labourers to become clerks. This was not the 
notion of Pestalozzi. Rousseau had completely freed him 
from bondage to the Renascence, and education did not 
mean to him a training in the use of books. He looked 
at the children of the lowest class of the peasants and asked 
himself what they needed to raise them. Knowledge would 
not do it. " The thing was not that they should know what 
they did not know, but that they should behave as they did 
not behave " {supra, p. 169) ; and the road to right action 
lay through right feeling. If they could be made conscious 
that they were loved and cared for, their hearts would open 
and give back love and respect in return. More than this, 
they must be taught not only to respect their elders but also 



PESTALOZZI. 297 



Neuhof filled with children. 



themselves. They must be taught to help themselves and 
contribute to their own maintenance. So Pestalozzi resolved 
to take into his own house some of the very poorest children, 
to bring them up in an atmosphere of love, and to instruct 
them in field-work and spinning which would soon partly 
(as Pestalozzi hoped, wholly) pay for their keep. Thus, just 
at the time when the experiment for himself failed he began 
for others an experiment that seemed likely to add indefi- 
nitely to his difficulties. 

§ 14. In the winter of 1774 the first children were taken 
into Neuhof. The consequences to his wife and to his little 
son only four years old might have vanquished the courage 
of a less ardent philanthropist. " Our position entailed much 
suffering on my wife /' he writes, " but nothing could shake 
us in our resolve to devote our time, strength and remaining 
fortune to the simplification of the instruction and domestic, 
education of the people." 

§ 15. These children, at first not more than 20 in number, 
Pestalozzi treated as his own. They worked with him in 
the summer in the garden and fields, in winter in the house. 
Very little time was given to separate lessons, the children 
often learning while they worked with their hands. Pestalozzi 
held that talking should come before reading and writing ; 
and he practised them in conversation on subjects taken 
from their every day life. They also repeated passages from 
the Bible till they knew them by heart. 

§ 16. In a few months, as we are told, the appearance of 
these poor little creatures had entirely changed ; though fed 
only on bread and vegetables they looked strong and hearty, 
and their faces gained an expression of cheerfulness, frank- 
ness and intelligence which till then had been totally 
wanting. They made good progress with their manual work 



208 PESTALOZZI. 



Appeal for the new Institution. 



as well as with the associated lessons, and took pleasure in 
both. In all they said and did, they seemed to show their 
consciousness of their benefactor's kind care of them. 

§ 17, This experiment naturally drew much attention to it, 
and when it had gone on over a year Pestalozzi was induced 
by his friend Iselin of Basel to insert in the Ephemerides (a 
paper of which Iselin was editor), an " appeal ... for 
an institution intended to provide education and work for 
poor country children." In this appeal Pestalozzi narrates 
his experience. " I have proved," says he, " that it is not 
regular work that stops the development of so many poor 
children, but the turmoil and irregularity of their lives, the 
privations they endure, the excesses they indulge in when 
opportunity offers, the wild rebellious passions so seldom 
restrained, and the hopelessness to which they are so often 
a prey. I have proved that children after having lost health, 
strength and courage in a life of idleness and mendicity have, 
when once set to regular work quickly recovered their health 
and spirits and grown rapidly. I have found that when 
taken out of their abject condition they soon become kindly, 
trustful and sympathetic; that even the most degraded of them 
are touched by kindness, and that the eyes of the child who 
has been steeped in misery, grow bright with pleasure and 
surprise, when, after years of hardship, he sees a gentle 
friendly hand stretched out to help him ; and I am convinced 
that ivhen a child's heart has been touched the consequences 
7vill be great for his develop fnettt and entire moral character." 

Pestalozzi therefore would have the very poorest children 
brought up in private establishments where agriculture and 
industry were combined, and where they would learn to work 
steadily and carefully with their hands, the chief part of 
their time being devoted to this manual work, and their in 



PESTALOZZI. 299 



Bankruptcy. The children sent away. 

struction and education being associated with it. And he 
asks for support in greatly increasing the establishment he 
lias already begun. 

§ 1 8. Encouraged by the support he received and still more 
by his love for the children and his own too sanguine disposi- 
tion Pestalozzi enlarged his undertaking. The consequence 
was bankruptcy. Several causes conspired to bring about 
this result. Whatever he might do for the children, he could 
not educate the parents, and these were many of them beggars 
with the ordinary vices of their class. With the usual discern- 
ment of such people they soon came to the conclusion that 
Pestalozzi was making a fortune out of their children's labour; 
so they haunted Neuhof, treated Pestalozzi with the greatest 
insolence, and often induced their children to run away in their 
new clothes. This would account for much, but there was 
another cause of failure that accounted for a great deal more. 
This was Pestalozzi's extreme incapacity as an administrator. 
Even his industrial experiment he carried on in such a way that 
it proved a source of expense rather than of profit. He says 
himself, that, contrary to his own principles, which should 
have led him to begin at the beginning and lay a good 
foundation in teaching, he put the children to work that was 
too difficult for them, wanted them to spin fine thread before 
their hands got steadiness and skill by exercise on the 
coarser kind, and to manufacture muslin before they could 
turn out well-made cotton goods. " Before I was aware of 
it," he adds," I was deeply involved in debt, and the greater 
part of my dear wife's property and expectations had, as it 
were, in an instant gone up in smoke." 

§ 19. The precise arrangement made with the creditors 
we do not know. The bare facts remain that the children 
were sent away, and that the land was let for the creditors' 



300 PESTALOZZI. 



Eighteen years of poverty and distress. 

benefit ; but Pestalozzi remained in the house. This was 
settled in 1780. 

§ 20. We have now come to the most gloomy period in 
Pestalozzi's history, a period of eighteen years, and those 
the best years in a man's life, which Pestalozzi spent in great 
distress from poverty without and doubt and despondency 
within. When he got into difficulties, his friends, he tells 
us, loved him without hope : " in the whole surrounding 
district it was everywhere said that I was a lost man, that 
nothing more could be done for me." " In his only too 
elegant country house," we are told, "he often wanted 
money, bread, fuel, to protect himself against hunger and 
cold." " Eighteen years ! — what a time for a soul like his 
to wait ! History passes lightly over such a period. Ten, 
twenty, thirty years — it makes but a cipher difference if 
nothing great happens in them. But with what agony must 
he have seen day after day, year after year gliding by, who 
in his fervent soul longed to labour for the good of mankind 
and yet looked in vain for the opportunity !" (Palmer.) 

§ 21. But he who was always ready to sacrifice himself for 
others now found someone, and that a stranger, ready to 
make a great sacrifice for him. A servant, named Elizabeth 
Naef, heard of the disaster and distress at Neuhof, and her 
master having just died she resolved to go to the rescue. At 
first Pestalozzi refused her help. He did not wish her to 
share the poverty of his household, and he felt himself out of 
sympathy with her "evangelical" form of piety. But 
Elizabeth declared she had come to stay, and when 
Pestalozzi found he could not shake her determination he 
consented, saying, " Well, you will find after all that God 
is in our house also." 

§ 22. To this pious sensible but illiterate peasant woman 



PESTALOZZI. 301 

Gertrude to the rescue. P.'s religion. 

Pestalozzi was fond of tracing many of his ideas. She was 
the original of his Gertrude^ and it was of her he wrote : 
" God's sun pursues its path from morning to evening ; yet 
your eye detects no movement, your ear no sound. Even 
when it goes down, you know that it will rise again and 
continue to ripen the fruits of the earth. Extreme as it may 
seem, I am not ashamed to say that this is an image of 
Gertrude as of every woman who makes her house a temple 
of the living God and wins heaven for her husband and 
children." {Leonard and Gertrude). She was invaluable at 
Neuhof and restored comfort to the household. In after years 
she managed the establishment at Yverdun and married 
one of the Kriisis who were Pestalozzi's assistants. ' 

§ 23. Writing of the gloomy years at Neuhof Pestalozzi 
afterwards said ; " My head was grey, yet I was still a child. 
With a heart in which all the foundations of life were shaken, 
I still pursued in those stormy times my favourite object, 
but my way was one of prejudice, of passion and of 
error." But with Pestalozzi self-depreciation had "almost 
grown the habit of his soul," and in his writings at Neuhof 
at this period we find no traces of this prejudice, passion and 
error from which he supposes himself to have suffered. He 
certa;nly did not abandon his love of humanity ; and in 
his sacrifice for it he sought a rehgious basis. In these 
Neuhof days he wrote : " Christ teaches us by His example 
and doctrine to sacrifice not only our possessions but our- 
selves foi the good of others, and shews us that nothing we 
have received is absolutely ours but is merely entrusted to 
us by God to be piously employed in the service of charity." 
(Quoted by Guimps. R's trans. 72.) Whatever were his 
doubts and difficulties, he never swerved from pursuing the 
great object of his life, and nothing could cloud his 



302 PESTALOZZI. 

P. turns author. " E. H. of Hermit." 

mind as to the true method of attaining that object. As he 
afterwards wrote to Gessner ( Wi'e Gertrud u.s.w.), " Even 
while I was the sport of men who condemned me I never 
lost sight for a moment of the object I had in view, wliich 
was the removal of the causes of the misery that I saw on 
all sides of me. My strength too kept on increasing, and my 
own misfortunes taught me valuable truths. I knew the 
people as no one else did. What deceived no one else 
always deceived me, but what deceived everybody else 
deceived me no longer. . . My own sufferings have 
enabled me to understand the sufferings of the people and 
their causes as no man without suffering can understand 
them. I suffered what the people suffered and saw them as 
no one else saw them ; and strange as it may seem, I was 
never more profoundly convinced of the fundamental truths 
on which I had based my undertaking than when I saw 
that I had failed." (R's. Guimps 74.) 

§ 24. Pestalozzi still had a few friends who did not 
despise the dreamer of dreams. Among them was the 
editor of the Ephemerides, Iselin. This friend encouraged 
him to write, and there soon appeared in the Ephetnerides 
a series of reflexions under the title of " The Evening Hour 
of a Hermit." Not many editors would have printed these 
aphorisms, and they attracted little or no attention at the 
time, but they have proved worth attending to. "The 
fiuit of Pestalozsi's past years, they are," says Raumer, 
" at the same time the seed-corn of the years that were to 
come, the plan and key to his action in pedagogy. . . 
The drawing of the architect of genius contains his work, 
even though the architect himself has not skill enough to 
carry out his own design." (Quoted by Otto Fischer).* 
* In these aphorisms Pestalozzi states the main principles at work in 



PESTALOZZI. 303 



P.'s belief. 



§ 25. What was the connexion between Pestalozzi's 
Qelief at this season and complete belief in dogmatic 
Christianity ? The question is one that will always be asked 
and can never, I think, be fully answered. In the days 

sis own mind ; but this bare statement is not well suited to communi- 
cate these* principles to the minds of others. For most readers the 
ipliorisms have as little attraction as the enunciations, say, of a book 
of Euclid would have for those who knew no geometry. But as his 
future life was guided by the principles he has formulated in this paper 
it seems necessary for us to bear some of these in mind. 

What he mainly insists upon is that all wise guidance must proceed 
from a knowledge of the nature of the creature to be guided ; further 
that there is a simple wisdom which must direct the course of all men. 
" The path of Nature," says he, " which brings out the powers of men 
must be open and plain ; and human education to true peace-giving 
wisdom must be simple and available for all. Nature brings out all 
men's powers by practice, and their increase springs from use." The 
powers of children should be strengthened by exercise on what is close 
at hand ; and this should be done without hardness or pressure. A 
forced and rigid sequence in instruction is not Nature's method, says he : 
this would make men one-sided, and truth would not penetrate freely 
and softly into their whole being. The pure feeling for truth grows in 
a small area ; and human wisdom must be grounded on a perception of 
our closest relationships, and must show itself in skilled management of 
our nearest concerns. Everything we do against our consciousness of 
right weakens our perception of truth and disturbs the purity of our 
fundamental conceptions and experiences. On this account all wisdom 
of man rests in the strength of a good heart that follows after truth, and all 
the blessing of man in the sense of simplicity and innocence. Peace of 
mind must be the outcome of right training. To get out of his surround- 
ings all he needs for life and enjoyment, to be patient, painstaking, and in 
every difficulty trustful in the love of the Heavenly Father, this comes 
of a man's true education to wisdom. Nothing concerns the human 
race so closely and intimately as — God. " God a^ Father of thy house — 
hold, as source of thy blessing — God as thy Father ; in this belief thou 
findest rest and strength and wisdom, which no violence nor the grave 
itself can overthrow." Belief in God which is a part of ournature, Uke 



304 PESTALOZZI. 



The "Hermit" a Christian. 



preceding the French Revolution it was a proof of wisdom 
to " Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, and chng to 
Faith," even though the Faith were " beyond the forms cf 
Faith " (see Tennyson's Ancient Sage). But Pestalozzi did 
far more than this. He traced all virtue and strength in 
the people to belief in the Fatherhood of God ; and he 
saw in unbelief the severance of all the bonds of society. 
The " Hermit " does not indeed use the phrases common 
among " evangelical " Christians, but that he was indeed a 
Christian is estabhshed not only by the general tone of his 
aphorisms but still more clearly by his last words : " The 
Man of God, who with his sufferings and death has restored 
to humanity the lost feeling of the child's disposition towards 
God is the Redeemer of the world ; he is the sacrificed 
Priest of the Lord ; he is the Mediator between God and 
God-forgetting mankind. His teaching is pure justice, 
educating philosophy of the people ; it is the revelation of 
God the Father to the lost race of his children." 

§ 26. The "Evening Hour "remaining almost unnoticed, 
Pestalozzi's friends urged him to write something in a more 
popular form. So he set to work on a tale which should 
depict the life of the peasantry and shew the causes of their 

the sense of right and wrong and the feeling we can never quench of 
what is just and unjust, must be made the foundation in educating the 
human race. The subject of that belief is that God is the Father of 
men, men are the children of God. To this divine relationship Pes- 
talozzi refers all human relationships as those of parent and child, of 
ruler and subject. The priest is appointed to declare the fatherhood of 
God and the brotherhood of men. 

The only text I have seen is that reprinted by Raumer {Gesck, d. 
Pad.). From Otto Fischer {Wtchtigste Pddagogen), I learn that this is 
the edition of 1807, which differs, at least by omission, from the original 
of 178a 



PESTALOZZI. 305 

Success of " Leonard and Gertrude." 

degradation and the cure. With extraordinary rapidity he 
wrote between the lines of an old account book the first 
part of his " Leonard and Gertrude." The book, which was 
complete in itself, and through the good offices of Iselin (of 
the Ephuncrides), soon found a publisher, suddenly sprang 
into immense popularity, a popularity of which nothing but 
the " continuations " could ever have deprived it. In the 
works of a great artist we see natural objects represented 
with perfect fidelity and yet with a life breathed into them 
by genius, which is wanting or at least is not visible to 
common eyes in the originals. Just so do we find Swiss 
peasant life depicted by Pestalozzi. The delineation is 
evidently true to nature ; and, at the same time, shows 
Nature as she reveals herself to genius. But for this work 
something more than genius was necessary, viz., sympathy 
and love. In the preface to the first edition, he says, " In 
that which I here relate, and which I have, for the most 
part, seen and heard myself in the course of an active life, 
I have taken care not once to add my own opinion to what 
I saw and heard the people themselves saying, feelingj 
believing, judging, and attempting." In a later edition 
(1800) he says, "I desired nothing then, and I desire 
nothing else now, as the object of my life, but the welfare 
of the people, whom I love, and whom I feel to be miserable 
as few feel them to be miserable, because I have with them 
borne their sufferings as few have borne them." 

§ 27. Wherever German was read this book excited vast 
interest, and though it seemed to most people only a good 
tale, it met with some more discerning readers. The Bern 
Agricultural Society sent the author their thanks and a gold 
medal, and Pestalozzi was at once recognised as a man who 
understood the peasantry and had good ideas for raising 



306 PESTALOZZI. 



Gertrude's patience tried. 



them. The book is and must remain a classic, but 
Pestalozzi in his zeal to spread the truth added again and 
again "continuations," and these became less and less 
popular in the method of exposition.* 

§ 28. Here and there we get glimpses of the trials 
Pestalozzi had gone through in his industrial experiment. 
" The love and patience," he writes, " with which Gertrude 
bore with the disorderly and untrained little ones was almost 
past belief. Their eyes were often anywhere but on their 
yarn, so that this would now be too thick, and now too thin. 
When they had spoiled it, they would watch for a moment 
when Gertrude was not looking, and throw it out of the 
window by the handful, until they found that she dis- 
covered the trick when she weighed their work at night." 
(E. C's. trans., p. 122.) And in this connexion Pestalozzi 
preached his doctrine of perfect attainment. "'What you 
can't do blindfold,'" said Harry, " ' you can't do at all.' " {ib.) 

§ 29. " Gertrude," we are told, "seemed quite unable to 
exi)lain her method in words ;" and here no doubt Pestalozzi 
was speaking of himself ; but like Gertrude he " would let 
fall some significant remark which went to the root of the 
whole matter of education." As an instance we may take 

* There are now four parts, first published respectively in •1781, 1783. 
1785, and 1787 (O. Fischer). The English translation in two small 
vols. (1825) ends with the First Part, but Miss Eva Channing has 
recently sought to weld the four parts into one (Boston, U.S. — D. C. 
Heath & Co.), and in this form the book seems to me not only very 
. instructive but very entertaining also. Not many readers who look 
into it will fail to reach the end, and few are the books connected with 
education of which this could prudently be asserted. "All good 
teachers should read it with care," says Stanley Hall in his Introduc- 
tion, and if they thus read it and catch anything of the spirit of Pesta^ 
lozzi both they and their pupils will have reason to rejoice. 



PESTALOZZI. 307 

Being and doing before knowing. 

what Gertrude said to the schoolmaster : " You should do 
for the children what their parents fail to do for them. The 
reading, writing, and arithmetic are not after all what they 
most need. It is all well and good for them to learn some- 
thing, but the really important thing for them is to be some- 
thing." When this truth is fully realized by teachers and 
school managers there will be some hope for national 
education. 

§ 30. " Although Gertrude exerted herself to develop very 
early the manual dexterity of her children, she was in no 
haste for them to learn to read and write ; but she took 
pains to teach them early how to speak : for, as she said, 
' Of what use is it for a person to be able to read and 
write if he cannot speak, since reading and ^NTriting are only 
an artificial sort of speech.' .... She did not adopt the 
tone of an instructor towards the children .... and her 
verbal instruction seemed to vanish in the spirit of her real 
activity, in which it always had its source. The result of 
her system was that each child was skilful, intelligent, and 
active to the full extent that its age and development 
allowed." {lb. p. 130.) 

§ 31. In this book we see that knowledge is treated as 
valueless unless it has a basis in action. "The pastor was 
soon convinced that all verbal instruction in so far as it aims 
at true human wisdom and at the highest goal of this 
wisdom, true religion, ought to be subordinated to a con- 
stant training in practical domestic labour So he 

strove to lead the children without many words to a quiet 
industrious life, and thus to lay the foundations of a silent 
worship of God and love of humanity. To this end he 
connected every word of his brief religious teachings with 
their actual every-day experience, so that when he spoke of 



308 PESTALOZZI. 

P.'s severity. Women Commissioners. 

God and eternity, it seemed to them as if he were speaking 
of father and mother, house and home; in short of the 
things with which they were most famihar" (p. 156). Thus 
he built on the foundation laid by the schoolmaster, who 
" cared for the children's heads as he did for their hearts, 
and demanded that whatever entered them should be plain 
and clear as the silent moon in the sky. To insure this he 
taught them to see and hear with accuracy, and cultivated 
their powers of attention " (p. 157). 

§ 32. With all his love for the children, an element of 
severity was not wanting. Pestalozzi maintained that " love 
was only useful in the education of men when in con- 
junction with fear : for they must learn to root out thorns 
and thistles, which they never do of their own accord, but 
only under compulsion and in consequence of training " 

(p. 157)- 

§ 33- J^st at the end of the book "the Duke" appoints 
a commission to report on the success of the Bonal experi- 
ment, and Pestalozzi makes him give the following order : 
" To insure thoroughness there must be among the ex- 
aminers men skilled in law and finance, merchants, clergy- 
men, government officials, schoolmasters, and physicians, 
besides women of different ranks and cojiditions of life who 
shall view the matter with their woman's eyes and be sure 
there is nothing visionary in the background " (p. 180), In 
this respect Pestalozzi is in advance of us still. No woman 
has yet sat on an educational commission. 

§ 34. Thus we find Pestalozzi at the age of thirty-five 
turning author, and for the next six or seven years he worked 
indefatigably with his pen. Most men of genius have some 
leading purpose which unites their varied activities, and 
this was specially true of Pestalozzi. He never lost sight 



PESTALOZZI. 309 



P.'s seven years of authorship. 

of his one object, which was the elevation of the people ; 
and this he held to be attainable only by means of education 
properly so called. The success of the first part of Leonard 
and Gertrude he now endeavoured to turn to account in 
spreading true ideas of education. With this intent he 
published Christopher and Eliza : My Second Book for the 
People (1782), which was a kind of commentary on Leonard 
and Gertrude. But the public wished to be amused, not 
taught ; and the book was a failure. He was thus driven 
into the attempt already mentioned to catch the public ear 
by continuing Leonard and Gertrude, thus endangering his 
first and, as it proved, his only great success in literature. 

§ 35. To gain circulation for his ideas he also started a 
weekly paper called the Swiss Journal, and issued it regu- 
larly throughout the year 1782; but the subscribers were 
so few that he was then obliged to give it up. I have not 
the smallest doubt that it was, as Guimps says, full of wisdom, 
but not the kind of wisdom that readers of periodicals are 
likely to care for.* 

* In the pages of this Journal Pestalozzi taught that it was ** the 
domestic virtues which determine the happiness of a nation." Again 
he says : " On the throne and in the cottage man has equal need of 
religion, and becomes the most wretched being on the earth if he forget 
his God." " The child at his mother's breast is weaker and more 
dependent than any creature on earth, and yet he already feels the first 
moral impressions of love and gratitude." ^^ Morality is nothing 
bill a result of the development of the first sentiments of love and grati- 
tude felt by the infant. The first development of the child's powers 
should come from his participation in the work of his home ; for this 
work is what his parents understand best, what most absorbs their 
attention, and what they can best teach. But even if this were not so, 
work undertaken to supply real needs would be just as truly the surest 
foundation of a good education. To engage the attention of the child, 
ta exercise his judgment, to raise his heart to noble sentiments, these 1 



3IO PESTALOZZI. 

" Citizen of French Republic." Doubts. 

§ 36. In the Swiss Journal we get a hint of the analogy 
between the development of the plant and of the man. 
This analogy, often as it had been observed before, was 
never before so fruitful as it became in the hands of 
Pestalozzi and Froebel. The passage quoted by Guimps is 
this : " Teach me, summer day, that man formed from the 
dust of the earth, grows and ripens like the plant rooted in 
the soil." 

§ 37. Betweep the close of the year 1787 and 1797 
Pestalozzi did not publish anything. Though he had 
become famous, had made the acquaintance of the greatest 
men in Germany, such as Goethe, Wieland, Herder, and 
Fichte, and had been declared a " Citizen of the French 
Republic," together with Bentham, Tom Payne, Wilberforce, 
Clarkson, Washington, Madison, KlopstoCk, Kozciusko, &c., 
he was nearly starving, and, naturally enough in that state 
of affairs both private and public, he was in great des- 
pondency. As we have seen, his whole life and work were 
founded on religion and on the only religion possible for us, 
the Christian religion ; but carried away by his political 
radicalism he seems at this time to have doubted whether 
Christianity was more than the highest human wisdom. In 
October, 1793, he wrote to a friend in Berlin: "I doubt, 
not because I look on doubt as the truth, but because the 
sum of the impressions of my life has driven faith with its 
blessings from my soul. Thus impelled by my fate I see 

think the chief ends of education : and how can these ends be reached so 
surelyas by training the child as early as possible in the various dailydaties 
of domestic life ?" It would seem then that at this time Pestalozzi was 
for basing education on domestic labour and would teach the child to 
be useful. But it is hard to see how this principle could always be 
applied. 



PESTALOZZI. 31 J 



Waiting. P.'s "Inquiry." 



nothing more in Christianity but the purest and noblest 
teaching of the victory of the spirit over the flesh, the one 
possible means of raising our nature to its true nobility, or 
in other words of establishing the empire of the reason over 
the senses by the development of the purest feelings ol 
the heart," If this was the lowest point to which Pestalozzi's 
faith sank in the days of the Revolution, it remained for 
practical purposes higher than the faith of most professing 
Christians then and since. 

§ 38. At this time we find him complaining : " My 
agriculture swallows up all my time. I am longing for 
winter with its leisure. My time passes hke a shadow." 
He was then forty-six years of age and seemed to himself 
to have done nothing. 

§ 39. Another five years he had to wait before he found 
an opportunity for action. During this time, impelled by 
Fichte, he endeavoured to give his ideas philosophic com- 
pleteness, and after labouring for three years with almost 
incredible toil he published in 1797 his "Inquiry into the 
Course of Nature in the Development of the Human 
Race." This book is pronounced even by his biographer 
Guimps to be " prolix and obscure," and, says Pestalozzi, 
"nobody understood me." But even in this book there was 
much wisdom, had the world cared to learn ; but the world 
had then no place for Pestalozzi, and as he says at the end 
of this book, " without even asking whether the fault was 
his or another's, it crushed him with its iron hammer as the 
mason crushes a useless stone." He was, however, not 
actually crushed, and a place was in time found for him. 

§ 40. The world might be pardoned for neglecting 
an Itiquiry which even a biographer finds " prolix and 
obscure." But why could it see nothing in another book 



3 1 2 PESTALOZZI. 

P.'s " Fables." 



which Pestalozzi published in the same year, " Figures to 
my ABC Book," or according to its later title, " Fables," a 
series of apologues as witty and wise as those of Lessing.* 

§ 41. As I have said already {supra p. 239) there seems 
a marked distinction between thinkers and doers, at least 
in education, and we seldom find a man great in both. But 
with all his weakness as a practical man Pestalozzi proved 
great both as a thinker and a doer. He not only thought 
out what should be done, but he also made splendid efforts 
to do it. His first attempt at Neuhof was, as we have seen, 
all his own ; so was the next at Stanz ; but afterwards he 
had to work with others, and the work would have come to 
a standstill if he had not gained the co-operation of the 
magistrates, the parents of the children, and his own 

* One of these I have already given {supra p. 292). I will give 
another, not as by any means one of the best, but as a fit companion to 
Rousseau's "two dogs." 

"26. The two colts. 

" Two colts as like as two eggs, fell into different hands. One was 
bought by a peasant whose only thought was to harness it to his plough 
as soon as possible : this one turned out a bad horse. The other fell to 
the lot of a man who by looking after it well and training it carefully, 
made a noble steed of it, strong and mettlesome. Fathers and mothers, 
if your children's faculties are not carefully trained and directed right, 
they will become not only useless, but hurtful ; and the greater the 
faculties the greater the danger." 

Compare Rousseau : "Just look at those two dogs ; they are 01 
the same litter, they have been brought up and treated precisely alike, 
they have never been separated ; and yet one of them is sharp, lively, 
affectionate, and very intelligent : the other is dull, lumpish, surly, and 
nobody could ever teach him anything. Simply a difference of tempera- 
ment has produced in them a difference of character, just as a simple 
difference of our interior organisation produces in us a difference c/ 
mind." N. Heloise. Sme P. Lettre iii. 



PESTALOZZI. 313 

P.'s own principles. 

assistants. So he never again had the free hand, or at least 
the free thought which bore such good fruit in his enforced 
cessation from practice in the years between 1780 and 1798. 
It is well then to ask, as his biographer Guimps has asked, 
what was the main outcome of Pestalozzi's thought before 
he plunged into action a second time in 1798. 

§ 42. Pestalozzi set himself to find a means of rescuing 
the people from their poverty and degradation. This he 
held would last as long as their moral and intellectual 
poverty lasted ; so there was no hope except in an education 
that should make them better and more intelligent. In 
studying the children even of the most degraded parents he 
found the seeds, as it were, of a wealth of faculties, senti- 
ments, tastes, and capabilities, which, if developed, might 
make them reasonable and upright human beings. But 
what was called education did nothing of the kind. Instead 
of developing the noblest part of the child's nature it 
neglected this entirely, and bringing to the child the know- 
ledge, ideas, and feelings of others, it tried to make him 
"learn" them. So "education" did httle beyond stifling 
the child's individuality under a mass of borrowed ideas. 
The schoolmaster worked, as it were, from without to within. 
This Pestalozzi would change, and make education begin in 
the child and work from within outwards. Acting on this 
principle he sought for some means of developing the 
child's inborn faculties, and he found as he says : " Nature 
develops all the powers of humanity by exercising them ; 
they increase with use." {Eveiiing Hour, Aph. 22.) No 
means can be found of exercising the higher faculties which 
can be compared with the actual relations of daily life ; so 
Pestalozzi declares: "The pure sentiment of -truth and 
wisdom is formed in the narrow circle of the relationships 



314 PESTALOZZl. 



P.'s return to action. 



which affect us, the circumstances which suggest our actions, 
and the common knowledge which we cannot do without." 
And taking as his starting-point the needs, desires, and con 
nexions of actual life he was naturally led to associate the 
work of the body with that of the mind, to develop industry 
and study side by side, to combine the workshop and the 
school. With regard to instruction he was never tired of 
insisting on the importance of thorough mastery in the 
first elements, and there was to be no advance till this 
mastery was attained. (See what *' Harry " says, szipra 
p. 306.) "The schools," he says {E. H., No. 28), " hastily 
substitute an artificial method of words for the truer method 
of Nature which knows no hurry but waits." 

§ 43. In this account of Pestalozzi's doctrine before 1798 
I have as usual followed M. Guimps. According to him 
Pestalozzi had discovered " a principle which settles the law 
of man's development, and is the fundamental principle of 
education." This principle M. Guimps briefly states as 
follows : " All the real knowledge, useful powers, and noble 
sentiments that a man can acquire are but the extension of 
his individuality by the development of the powers and 
faculties that God has put in him, and by their assimilation 
of the elements supplied by the outer world. There exists 
for this development and the work of assimilation a natural 
and necessary order, an order which the school mostly sets 
at nought." 

§ 44. Now we come to the period of Pestalozzi's practical 
activity. In 1798 Switzerland was overrun by the French. 
Everything was remodelled after the French pattern ; and 
in conformity with the existing phase in the model country 
the government of Switzerland was declared to be in the 
hands of five " Directors." Pestalozzi was a Radical, and 



PESTALOZZI. 315 



The French at Stanz. 



he at once set to work to serve the new government with 
his pen. The Directors gladly welcomed such an ally as the 
author of Leonard and Gertrude, and they made him 
editor of a newspaper intended to diffuse the revolutionary 
principles among the people. Naturally enough they sup- 
posed that he, like other people, " wanted " something ; but 
when asked what he wanted he replied simply that he 
wished to be a schoolmaster. The Directors, especially Le 
Grand, took a genuine interest in education, and were quite 
willing that PestalOzzi should be allowed a free hand in his 
"new departure." They therefore agreed to find the funds 
with which Pestalozzi might open a new Institution in 
Aargau. 

§ 45. But the editorship and the plans for the new Insti- 
tution came to an abrupt ending. The Catholic cantons 
did not acquiesce in giving up their local liberties and being 
subjected to a new government in the hands of men whom 
they regarded as heretics and even atheists. Consequently 
those missionaries of enlightenment, the French troops, at 
once fell upon them and slaughtered many without dis- 
tinction of age or sex. The French, we are told, did not 
expect to meet with resistance ; so their light became 
lightning and struck dead the stupid people who could 
not or would not see. " Our soldiers " (it is Michelet who 
speaks) "were ferocious at Stanz." {Nos Fils, 217). This 
ferocity at Stanz in September, 1798, was in secret dis- 
approved of by the Directors, who were nominally respon- 
sible for it. But all they could do was to provide in a 
measure for the "in infirm old people, the 169 orphans, 
and 237 other children," who were left totally destitute. 
Le Grand proposed to Pestalozzi that he should, for the 
present, give up his other plans and go to Stanz (which is ■on 



3l6 PESTALOZZI. 



Pestalozzi at Stanz. 



the Lake of Lucerne) to take charge of the orphan and 
destitute children. Pestalozzi was not the man to refuse 
such a task as this. He at once set out. Some buildings 
connected with an Ursuline convent were, without the con- 
sent of the nuns, made over to him. Workmen were 
employed upon them, and as soon as a single room could 
be inhabited Pestalozzi received forty children into it. 
This was in January, 1799, in the middle of a remarkably 
cold winter. 

§ 46. Thus under circumstances perhaps less un- 
favourable than they seemed began the five months' trial of 
pure Pestalozzianism. The physical diiificulties were im- 
mense. At first Pestalozzi and all the children were shut 
up day and night in a single room. He had throughout 
no helper of any kind but one female servant, and he had 
to do everything for the children, even what was most 
menial and disgusting. As soon as possible the number 
was increased, and before long was nearly eighty, some of 
the children having to go out to sleep. But great as were 
the material difficulties, those arising from the opposition and 
hatred of the people he came to succour were still worse. 
To them he seemed no philanthropist, but only a servant 
of the devil, an agent of the wicked government which had 
sent its ferocious soldiers and slaughtered the parents of 
these poor children, a Protestant who came to complete the 
work by destroying their souls. Pestalozzi, who was making 
heroic efforts in their behalf, seems to have wondered at the 
animosity shown him by the people of Stanz ; but on 
looking back we must admit that in the circumstances it 
was only natural. 

§ 47. And yet in spite of enormous difficulties of every 
kind Pestalozzi triumphed. Within the five month? he 



PESTALOZZI. 317 

Success and expulsion. 

spent with them he attached to him the hearts of the 
children, and produced in them a marvellous physical, 
intellectual, and moral change. "If ever there was a 
miracle," says Michelet, " it was here. It was the reward 
of a strong faith, of a wonderful expansion of heart. He 
believed, he willed, he succeeded." {Nos Fils 223.) 

What was the great act of faith by which Pestalozzi 
triumphed? According to M. Michelet he stood before 
these vicious and degraded children and said, " Man is 
good." Pestalozzi does not tell us this himself; and as a 
benighted believer in Christianity, I venture to differ from 
the enlightened Michelet. As far as I can judge from 
Pestalozzi's own teaching the source of his strength was his 
belief in the goodness not of Man but of God. 

§ 48. But encouraged and rewarded as he was by the 
result, Pestalozzi could not long have maintained this fearful 
exertion. He was over fifty years of age, and he must soon 
have succumbed ; indeed he was already spitting blood when 
in June, 1799, the French soldiers, whose action had 
brought him to Stanz, drove him away again. Falling back 
before the Austrians they had need of a hospital in Stanz, 
and demanded the buildings occupied by Pestalozzi and the 
children. So almost all the children had to be sent away, 
and then at last Pestalozzi took thought for his own health 
and retired to some baths in the mountains. But most of 
his peculiarities in teaching may be said to date from the 
experience at Stanz ; and I will therefore give this experience 
in his own words. 

§ 49. The following is the account given in his letter to 
his friend Gessner. (I have in part availed myself of Mr. 
Russell's translation of Guimps, pp. 149^) 



3l8 PESTALOZZI, 



At Stanz : P.'s own account. 

" My friend, once more I awake from a dream ; once more I see my 
work destroyed, and my failing strength wasted. 

"But, however weak and unfortunate my attempt, a friend of 
humanity will not grudge a few moments to consider the reasons which 
convince me that some day a more fortunate posterity will certainly 
take up the thread of my hopes at the place where it is now broken. . . . 

" I once more made known, as well as I could, my old wishes for the 
education of the people. In particular, I laid my whole scheme before 
Legrand (then one of the Directors), who not only took a warm interest 
in it, but agreed with me that the Republic stood in urgent need of. a 
reform of public education. He also agreed with me that much might 
be done for the regeneration of the people by giving a certain number 
of the poorest children an education which should be complete, but 
which, far from lifting them out of their proper sphere, would but attach 
them the more strongly to it. 

" I limited my desires to this one point, Legrand helping me in 
every possible way. He even thought my views so important that he 
once said to me : ' I shall not willingly give up my present post till 
you have begun your work.' . . . . - 

*' It was my intention to try to find near Zurich or in Aargau a place 
where I should be able to join industry and agriculture to the other 
means of instruction, and so give my establishment all the development 
necessary to its complete success. But the Unterwalden disaster 
(September, 1798) left me no further choice in the matter. The 
Government felt the urgent need of sending help to this unfortunate 
district, and begged me for this once to make an attempt to put my 
plans into execution in a place where almost everytliing that could have 
made it a success was wanting. 

" I went there gladly. I felt that the innocence of the people would 
make up for what was wanting, and that their distress would, at any 
rate, make them grateful. 

'* My e.igerness to realise at last the great dream of my life would have 
led me to work on the very highest peaks of the Alps, and, so to speak, 
without fire or water. 

" Foi a house, the Government made over to me the new part of the 
Ursuline convent at Stanz, but when I arrived it was still uncompleted, 
and not in any way fitted to receive a large number of children. Before 
anything else could be done, then, the house itself had to be got ready. 



PESTALOZZI. 319 



At Stanz: P.'s own account. 



The Government gave the necessary orders, and Rengger pushed on the 
work with much zeal and useful activity. I was never indeed allowed 
to want for money. 

•* In spite, however, of the admirable support I received, all this 
prrparation took time, and time was. precisely what we could least 
aflord, since it was of the highest importance that a number of 
children, whom the war had left homeless and destitute, should be 
received at once. 

" I was still without everything but money when the children crowded 
in ; neither kitchen, rooms, nor beds were ready to receive them. At 
first this was a source of inconceivable confusion. For the first few 
weeks I was shut up in a very small room ; the weather was bad, and 
the alterations, which made a great dust and filled the corridors with 
rubbish, rendered the air very unhealthy. 

" The want of beds compelled me at first to send some of the poor 
children home at night ; these children generally came back the next 
day covered with vermin. Most of them on their arrival were very 
degenerated specimens of humanity. Many of them had a sort 
of chronic skin-disease, which almost prevented their walking, or sores 
on their heads, or rags full of vermin ; many were almost skeletons, 
with haggard, careworn faces, and shrinking looks ; some brazen, 
accustomed to begging, hypocrisy, and all sorts of deceit ; others broken 
by misfortune, patient, suspicious, timid, and entirely devoid of 
affection. There were also some spoilt children amongst them who had 
known the sweets of comfort, and were therefore full of pretensions. 
These kept to themselves, affected to despise the little beggars their 
comrades, and to suffer from this equality, and seemed to find it im- 
possible to adapt themselves to the ways of the house, which differed 
too much from their old habits. But what was common to them all 
was a persistent idleness, resulting from their want of physical and 
mental activity. Out of every ten children there was hardly one who 
knew his A B C ; as for any other knowledge, it was, of course, out of 
the question. 

*' The entire absence of school learning was what troubled me least, 
for I trusted in the natural powers that God bestows on even the poorest 
and most neglected children. I had observed for a long time that 
behind their coarseness, shyness, and apparent incapacity, are hidden 
the finest faculties, the most precious powers ; and now, even amongst 



320 PESTALOZZI. 



At Stanz: P.'s own account. 



these poor creatures by whom I was surrounded at Stanz, marked 
natural abilities soon began to show themselves. I knew how useful 
the common needs of life are in teaching men the relations of things, in 
bringing out their natural intelligence, in forming their judgment, and 
in arousing faculties which, buried, as it were, beneath the coaiser 
elements of their nature, cannot become active and useful till they are 
aet free. It was my object then to set free these faculties, and bring 
them to bear on the pure and simple circumstances of domestic life, for 
I was convinced this was all that was wanting, and these natural 
faculties would shew themselves capable of raising the hearts and minds 
of my pupils to all that I could desire. 

'* I saw then how my wishes might be carried out ; and I was persuaded 
that my affection would change the state of my children just as quickly 
as the spring sun would awake to new life the earth that winter had 
benumbed. I was not deceiving myself : before the spring sun melted 
the snow of our mountains my children were hardly to be recognised. 

" But I must not anticipate. Just as in the evening I often mark the 
quick growth of the gourd by the side of the house, so I want you to 
mark the growth of my plant ; and, my friend, I will not hide from 
you the worm which sometimes fastens on the leaves, sometimes even 
on the heart. 

" I opened the establishment with no other helper but a woman- 
servant. I had not only to teach the children, but to look after their 
physical needs. I preferred being alone, and, unfortunately, it was the 
only way to reach my end. No one in the world would have cared to 
enter into my views for the education of children, and at that time I 
knew scarcely any one even capable of it. 

" In proportion as the men whom I might have called to my aid were 
highly educated just so far they failed to understand me, and were 
incapable of confining themselves even in theory to the simple starting- 
pomts which I sought to come back to. All their views about the 
organisation and requirements of the enterprise differed entirely from 
mine. What they specially objected to was the notion that the enter- 
prise might be carried out without the aid of any artificial means, and 
simply by the influence of nature in the environment of the children, 
and by the activity aroused in them by the needs of their daily life. 

" And yet it was precisely upon this idea that I based all my hope of 
success ; it was, as it were, a basis for innumerable other points of view. 



PESTALOZZI, 321 



At Stanz : P.'s own account. 



" Experienced teachers, then, could not help me ; still less boorish, 
Ignorant men. I had nothing to put into the hands of assistants to 
f,uide them, nor any results or apparatus by which I could make my 
ideas clearer to them. Thus, whether I would or no, I had first to 
make my experiment alone, and collect facts to illustrate the essential 
features of my system before I could venture to look for outside help. 
Indeed in my then position, nobody could help me. I knew that I must 
help myself and shaped my plans accordingly. 

" I wanted to prove by my experiment that if public education is to 
have any real value for humanity, it must imitate the means which make 
the merit of domestic education ; for it is my opinion that if school 
teaching does not take into consideration the circumstances of family life, 
and everything else that bears on a man's general education, it can only 
lead to an artificial and methodical dwarfing of humanity. 

" In any good education, the mother must be able to judge daily, nay 
hourly, from the child's eyes, lips, and face, of the slightest change in 
his soul. The power of the educator, too, must be that of a father, 
quickened by the general circumstances of domestic life. 

" Such was the foundation upon which I built. I determined 
that there should not be a minute in the day when my children should 
not be aware from my face and my lips that my heart was theirs, that 
their happiness was my happiness, and their pleasures my pleasures. 

" Man readily accepts what is good, and the child readily listens to 
it ; but it is not for you that he wants it, master and educator, but for 
himself. The good to which you would lead him must not depend on 
your capricious humour or passion ; it must be a good which is good in 
itself and by the nature of things;, and which the child can recognize as 
good. He must feel the necessity of your will in things which concern 
his comfort before he can be expected to obey it. 

•' Whatever he does gladly, whatever gains him credit, whatever 
tends to accomplish his great hopes, whatever awakens his powers and 
enables him truly to say I can, all this he wills. 

" But this will is not aroused by words ; it is aroused only by a kind 
of complete culture which gives feelings and powers. Words do not 
give the thing itself, but only an expression, a clear picture, of the thing 
which we already have in our minds. 

" Before all things I was bound to gain the confidence and the 
Jo ?e of the children. I was sure that if I succeeded in this all the resJ 
w 



322 PESTALOZZI, 



At Stanz : P.'s own account. 



would come of itself. Friend, only think how I was placed, and how 
great were the prejudices of the people and of the children themselves, 
and you will comprehend what difficulties I had to overcome. ' 
After narrating what we already know he goes on : 
" Think, my friend, of this temper of the people, of my weakness, 
of my poor appearance, of the ill-will to which I was almost publicly 
exposed, and then judge how much I had to endure for the sake of 
carrj'ing on my work. 

" And yet, however painful this want of help and support was to me, 
it was favourable to the success of my undertaking, for it compelled me 
to be always everything for my children. I was alone with them from 
morning till night. It was from me that they received all that could 
do them good, soul and body. All needful help, consolation, and 
instruction they received direct from me. Their hands were in mine, 
my eyes were fixed on theirs. 

"We wept and smiled together. They forgot the world and Stanz ; 
they only knew that they were with me and I with them. We shared 
our food and drink. I had about me neither family, friends, nor 
servants ; nothing but them. I was with them in sickness, and in 
health, and when they slept. I was the last to go to bed, and the first 
to get up. In the bedroom I prayed with them, and, at their own 
request, taught them till they fell asleep. Their clothes and bodies 
were intolerably filthy, but I looked after both myself, and was thus 
constantly exposed to the risk of coniagion. 

" This is how it was that these children gradually became so attached 
to me, some indeed so deeply that they contradicted their parents and 
friends when they heard evil things said about me. They felt that I 
was being treated unfairly, and loved me, I think, the more for it. 
But of what avail is it for the young nestlings to love their mother when 
thebirdof prey that is bent on destroying themisconstantlyhoveringnear? 
"However, the first results of these principles and of this line oi 
action were not always satisfactory, nor, indeed, could they be so. 
The children did not always understand my love. Accustomed to 
idleness, unbounded liberty, and the fortuitous and lawless pleasures of 
an almost wild life, they had come to the convent in the expectation of 
being well fed, and of having nothing to do. Some of them soon 
discovered that they had been there long enough, and wanted to go 
away again ; they talked of the school fever that attacks children when 



PESTALOZZI. 323 

At Stanz: P.'s own account. 

they are kept employed all day long. This dissatisfaction, which 
showed itself during the first months, resulted principally from the fact 
that many of them were ill, the consequence either of the sudden 
change of diet and habits, or of the severity of the weather and the 
dampness of the building in which we lived. We all coughed a great 
deal, and several children were seized with a peculiar sort of fever. 
This fever, which always began with sickness, was very general in the 
district. Cases of sickness, however, not followed by fever, were not 
at all rare, and were an almost natural consequence of the change of 
food. Many people attributed the fever to bad food, but the facts scon 
showed them to be wrong, for not a single child succumbed. 

*' On the return of spring it was evident to everybody that the 
children were all doing well, growing rapidly, and gaining colour. 
Certain magistrates and ecclesiastics, who saw them some time after- 
wards, stated that they had improved almost beyond recognition. . . , 

" Months passed before I had the satisfaction of having my hand 
grasped by a single grateful parent. But the children were won over 
much sooner. They even wept sometimes when their parents met me 
or left me without a word of salutation. Many of them were perfectly 
happy, and used to say to their mothers : ' I am better here than at 
home.' At home, indeed, as they readily told me when we talked 
alone, they had been ill-used and beaten, and had often had neither 
bread to eat nor bed to lie down upon. And yet these same children 
would sometimes go off with their mothers the very next morning. 

"A good many others, however, soon saw that by staying with me 
they might both learn something and become something, and these never 
failed in their zeal and attachment. Before very long their conduct 
was imitated by others who had not altogether the same feelings. 

"Those who ran away were the worst in character and the least 
capable. But they were not incited to go till they were free of their 
vermin and their rags. Several were sent to me with no other purpose 
than that of being taken away again as soon as they were clean and 
well clothed. 

" But after a time their better judgment overcame the defiant hostility 
with which they arrived. In 1799* I had nearly eighty children. 
Most of them were bright and intelligent, some even remarkably so. 

* Pestalozzi was with the children at Stanz only during the fiist half 
of 1799. 



324 PESTALOZZI. 



At Stanz : P.'s own account. 



" For most of them study was something entirely new. As soon as 
they found that they could learn, their zeal was indefatigable, and in a 
few weeks children who had never before opened a book, and could 
hardly repeat a Pater Noster or an Ave, would study the whole day 
long with the keenest interest. Even after supper, when I used to say 
to them, 'Children, will you go to bed, or learn something?' they 
would generally answer, especially in the first month or two, ' Learn 
something.' It is true that afterwards, when they had to get up very 
early, it was not quite the same. 

" But this first eagerness did much towards starting the establishment 
on the right lines, and making the studies the success they ultimately 
were, a success, indeed, which far surpassed my expectations. And 
yet great beyond expression were my difficulties. I did not as yet find 
it possible to organise the studies properly. 

" Neither my trust nor my zeal had been able to overcome either the 
intractability of individuals or the want of coherence in the whole 
experiment. The general order of the establishment, I felt, must be 
based upon order of a higher character. As this higher order did not 
yet exist, I had to attempt to create it ; for without this foundation I 
could not hope to organise properly either the teaching or the general 
management of the place, nor should I have wished to do so. I wanted 
everything to result not from a preconceived plan, but from my 
relations with the children. The high principles and educating forces 
I was seeking, I looked for from the harmonious common life of my 
children, from their common attention, activity, and needs. It was not, 
then, from any external organisation that I looked for the regeneration 
of which they stood so much in need. If I had employed constraint, 
regulations, and lectures, I should, instead of winning and ennobling 
my children's hearts, have repelled them and made them bitter, and 
thus been farther than ever from my aim. First of all, I had to arouse 
in them pure, moral, and noble feelings, so that afterwards, in external 
things, I might be sure of their ready attention, activity, and obedience. 
I had, in short, to follow the high precept of Jesus Christ, ' Cleanse first 
thai; which is within, that the outside may be clean aLo ' ; and if evei 
the truth of this precept was made manifest, it was made manifest then. 

" My one aim was to make their new life in conimon, and their new 
powers, awaken a feeling of brotherhood amongst the children, and 
make them affectionate, just, and considerate. 



PESTALOZZI. 325 

At Stanz : P.'s own account. 

" I was successful in gaining my aims. Amongst these seventy wild 
begcjar-childrcn there soon existed such peace, friendship, and cordial 
lelitions as are rare even between actual brothers and sisters. 

" The principle to which I endeavoured to conform all my conduct 
was as follows : Endeavour, first, to broaden your children's 
sympathies, and, by satisfying their daily needs, to bring love and 
kindness into such unceasing contact with their impressions and their 
activity, that these sentiments may be engrafted in their hearts ; then 
try to give them such judgment and tact as will enable them to make a 
wise, sure, and abundant use of these virtues in the circle which 
surrounds them. In the last place, do not hesitate to touch on the 
difficult questions of good and evil, and the words connected with 
them. And you must do this especially in connection with the ordinary 
events of every day, upon which your whole teaching in these matters 
must be founded, so that the children may be reminded of their own 
feelings, and supplied, as it were, with s'^lid facts upon which to base 
their conception of the beauty and justice of the moral life. Even though 
you should have to spend whole nights in trying to express in two 
words what others say in twenty, never regret the loss of sleep. 

" I gave my children very few explanations ; I taught them neither 
morality nor religion. But sometimes, when they were perfectly quiet, 
I used to say to them, ' Do you not tliink that you are better and more 
reasonable when you are like this than when you are making a noise?' 
When they clung round my neck and called me their father, I used to 
say, ' My children, would it be right to deceive your father ? After 
kissing me like this, would you like to do anything behind my back to 
vex me ? ' When our talk turned on the misery of the country, and 
they were feeling glad at the thought of their own happier lot, I would 
say, ' How good God is to have given man a compassionate heart ! ' 
. . , . They perfectly understood that all they did was but a prepara- 
tion for their future activity, and they looked forward to happiness as 
the certain result of their perseverance. That is why steady application 
soon became easy to them, its object being in perfect accordance with 
Ihcir wishes and their hopes. Virtue, my friend, is developed by this 
agreement, just as the young plant thrives when the soil suits its nature, 
and supplies the needs of its tender shoots. 

" I witnessed the growth of an inward strength in my children, 
which, in its general development, far surpassed my expectations, and 



326 PESTALOZZI. 



At Stanz: P.'s own account. 



in its particular manifestations not only often surprised me, but touched 
me deeply. 

" When the neighbouring town of Altdorf was burnt down, 1 
gathered the children round me, and said, ' Altdorf has bten burnt 
down ; perhaps, at this very moment, there are a hundred children 
there without home, food, or clothes ; will you not ask our good 
Government to let twenty of them come and live with us ? * I still 
seem to see the emotion with which they answered, * Oh, yes, yes ! ' 
' But, my children,' I said, ' think well of what you are asking ! Even 
now we have scarcely money enough, and it is not at all certain that if 
these poor children came to us, the Government would give us any 
more than they do at present, so that you might have to work harder, 
and share your clothes with these children, and sometimes perhaps go 
without food. Do not say, then, that you would like them to come 
unless you are quite prepared for all these consequences.' After having 
spoken to them in this way as seriously as I could, I made them repeat 
all I had said, to be quite sure that they had thoroughly understood 
what the consequences of their request would be. But they were not 
in the least shaken in their decision, and all repeated, ' Yes, yes, we 
are quite ready to work harder, eat less, and share our clothes, for wa 
want them to come.' 

" Some refugees from the Grisons having given me a few crowns for 
my poor children, I at once called them and said, ' These men are 
obliged to leave their country ; they hardly know where they will find 
a home to-morrow, yet, in spite of their trouble, they have given me 
this for you. Come and thank them.' And the emotion of the 
children brought tears to the eyes of the refugees. 

" It was in this way that I strove to awaken the feeling of each 
virtue before talking about it, for I thought it unwise to talk to children 
on subjects which would compel them to speak without thoroughly 
understanding what they were saying. 

" I followed up this awakening of the sentiments by exercises intended 
to teach the children self-control, so that all that was good in iheia 
might be applied to the practical questions of every-day life. 

" It will easily be understood that, in this respect, it was not possible 
to organise any system of discipline for the establishment ; that could 
only come slowly, as the general work developed. 

" Silence, as an aid to application, is perhaps the great secret of such 



PESTALOZZI. 327 



At Stanz : P.'s own account. 



an institution. I found it very useful to insist on silence when I wp.s 
teaching, and also to pay particular attention to the attitude of my 
chill !ren. I succeeded so well that the moment I asked for silence, I 
could teach in quite a low voice. The children repeated my words all 
logetlier ; and as there was no other sound, I was able to detect the 
slightest mistakes of pronunciation. It is true that this was not always 
so. Sometimes, whilst they repeated sentences after me, I would ask 
them as if in fun to keep their eyes fixed on their middle fingers. It is 
hardly credible how useful simple things of this sort sometimes are 
as means to the very highest ends. 

" One young girl, for instance, who had been little better than a 
savage, by keeping her head and body upright, and not looking about, 
made more progress in her moral education than any one would have 
believed possible. 

" These experiences have shown me that the mere habit of carrying 
oneself well does much more for the education of the moral sentiments 
than any amount of teaching and lectures in which this simple fact is 
ignored. 

"Thanks to the application of these principles, my children soon 
became more open, more contented and more susceptible to everj' good 
and noble influence than any one could possibly have foreseen when 
they first came to me, so utterly devoid were they of ideas, good 
feelings, and moral principles. As a matter of fact, this lack o( 
previous instruction was not a serious obstacle to me ; indeed, it hirdly 
troubled me at all. I am inclined even to say that, in the simple 
method I was following, it was often an advantage, for I had incom- 
parably less trouble to develop those children whose minds were still 
blank, than those who had already acquired inaccurate ideas. The 
former, too, were much more open than the latter to the influence of all 
pure and simple sentiments. 

" But when the children were obdurate and churlish, then I was 
severe, and made use of corporal punishment. 

" My dear friend, the pedagogical principle which says that we must 
win the hearts and minds of our children by words alone without 
having recourse to corporal punishment, is certainly good, and applicable 
under favourable conditions and circumstances ; but with children of 
such widely different ages as mine, children for the most part beggars, 
nnc^ all full of deeply-rooted faults, a certain amount of corporal punish< 



328 PESTALOZZI. 



At Stanz : P.'s own account. 



ment was inevitable, especially as I was anxious to arrive surely, 
speedily, and by the simplest means, at gaining an influence over them 
all, for the sake of putting them all in the right road. I was compelled 
to punish them, but it would be a mistake to suppose that I thereby, in 
any way, lost the confidence of my pupils. 

" It is not the rare and isolated actions that form the opinions and 
feelings of children, but the impressions of every day and every hour. 
From such impressions they judge whether we are kindly disposed 
towards them or not, and this settles their general attitude towards us. 
Their judgment of isolated actions depends upon this general attitude. 

" This is how it is that punishments inflicted by parents rarely make 
a bad impression. But it is quite different with schoolmasters and 
teachers who are not with their children night and day, and have none 
of those relations with them which result from life in common. 

" My punishments never produced obstinacy ; the children I had 
beaten were quite satisfied if a moment afterwards I gave them my 
hand and kissed them, and I could read in their eyes that the finul 
effect of my blows was really joy. The following is a striking instance 
of the effect this sort of punishment sometimes had. One day one of 
the children I liked best, taking advantage of my affection, unjustly 
threatened one of his companions. I was very indignant, and my 
hand did not spare him. He seemed at first almost broken-hearted, and 
cried bitterly for at least a quarter of an hour. When I had gone out, 
however, he got up, and going to the boy he had ill-treated, begged his 
pardon, and thanked him for having spoken about his bad conduct. 
My friend, this was no comedy ; the child had never seen anything 
like it before. 

" It was impossible that this sort of treatment should produce a bad 
impression on my children, because all day long I was giving them 
proofs of my affection and devotion. They could not misread my 
heart, and so they did not misjudge my actions. It was not the same 
wilh the parents, friends, strangers, and teachers who visited us; but 
that was natural. But I cared nothing for the opinion of the whole 
world, provided my children understood me. 

" I always did my best, therefore, to make them clearly understand 
the motives of my actions in all matters likely to excite their attention 
and interest. This, my friend, brings me to the consideration of the 
moral means to be employed in a truly domestic education. 



PESTALOZZI. 329 



At Stanz : P.'s own account. 



" Elementary moral education, considered as a whole, includes three 
distinct parts : the children's moral sense must first be aroused by their 
feelings being made active and pure ; then they must be exercised in 
self-control, so that they may give themselves to that which is right and 
good ; finally they must be brought to form for themselves, by reflection 
and comparison, a just notion of the moral rights and duties which are 
theirs by reason of their position and surroundings. 

" So far, I have pointed out some of the means I employed to reach 
the first two of these ends. They were just as simple for the third ; for 
I still made use of the impressions and experiences of their daily life to 
give my children a trae and exact idea of right and duty. When, for 
instance, they made a noise, I appealed to their own judgment, and 
asked them if it was possible to learn under such conditions. I shall 
never forget how strong and true I generally found their sense of 
justice and reason, and how this sense increased and, as it were, estab- 
lished their good will. 

" I appealed to them in all matters that concerned the establishment. 
It was generally in the quiet evening hours that I appealed to their free 
judgment. When, for instance, it was reported in the village that they 
had not enough to eat, I said to them, ' Tell me, my children, if you 
are not better fed than you were at home ? Think, and tell me your- 
selves, whether it would be well to keep you here in such a way as 
would make it impossible for you afterwards, in spite of all your appli- 
cation and hard work, to procure what you had become accustomed to. 
Do you lack anything that is really necessary ? Do you think that I 
could reasonably and justly do more for you? Would you have me 
spend all the money that is entrusted to me on thirty or forty children 
instead of on eighty as at present ? Would that be just ? ' 

" In the same way, when I heard that it was reported that I punished 
them too severely, I said to them : ' You know how I love you, my 
children ; but tell me would you like me to stop punishing you? Do 
you ihmk that in any other way I can free you from your deeply-rooted 
bad habits, or make you always mind wjiat I say ? ' You were there, 
my friend, and saw with your own eyes the sincere emotion with which 
they answered, ' We don't complain about your hitting us. We wish 
we never deserved it. But we want to be punished when we do wrong. ' 

" Many things that make no difference in a small household could 
not be tolerated where the numbers were so great. I tried to make 



330 PESTALOZZI. 



At Stanz : P.'s own account. 



my children feel this, always leaving them to decide ;what could or 
could not be allowed. It is true that in my intercourse with them I 
never spoke of liberty or equality ; but, at the same time, I encourage d 
them as far as possible to be free and unconstrained in my presence, wiili 
the result that every day I marked more and more that clear open look 
in their eyes which, in my experience, is the sign of a really liberal 
education. I could not bear the thought of betraying the trust in me 
which I saw shining in their eyes ; I strove constantly to strengthen it 
and at the same time their free individuality, that nothing might happen 
to trouble those angel-eyes, the sight of which caused me the most 
intense delight. But I could not endure frowns and anxious looks ; I 
myself smoothed away the frowns ; then the children smiled, and even 
among themselves they took care not to shew frowning faces. 

" By reason of their great number, I had occasion nearly every day 
to point out the difference between good and evil, justice and injustice. 
Good and evil are equally contagious amongst so many children, so that, 
according as the good or bad sentiments spread, the establishment was 
likely to become either much better or much worse than if it had only con- 
tained a smaller number. About this, too, I talked to them frankly. I shall 
never forget the impression that my words produced when, in speaking 
of a certain disturbance that had taken place among them, I said, 
' My children, it is the same with us as with every other household ; 
when the children are numerous, and each gives way to his bad habits, 
the disorder becomes such that the weakest mother is driven to take 
sensible measures in bringing up her children, and make them submit to 
what is just and right. And that is what I must do now. If you do 
not willingly assist in the maintenance of order, our establishment 
cannot go on, you will fall back into your former condition, and your 
misery —now that you have been accustomed to a good home, clean 
clothes, and regular food — will be greater than ever. In this world, my 
children, necessity and conviction alone can teach a man to behave ; 
when both fail him, he is hateful. Think for a moment wliat you 
would become if you were safe from want and cared nothing for right, 
justice, or goodness. At home there was always some one who looked 
after you, and poverty itself forced you to many a right action ; but with 
convictions and reason to guide you, you will rise far higher than by 
following necessity alone.' 

*' I often spoke to them in this way without troubling in the least 



PESTALOZZI. 331 



At Stanz: P.'s own account. 



whether they jach understood every word, feeling quite sure that 
they all caught the general sense of what I said 

" Here are a few more thoughts which produced a great impression on 
my children : * Do you know anything greater or nobler than to give 
counsel to the poor, and comfort to the unfortunate? But if you remain 
ignorant and incapable, you will be obliged, in spite of your good heart, 
to let things take their course ; whereas, if you acquire knowledge and 
power, you will be able to give good advice, and save many a man from 
misery.' 

"I have generally found that great, noble, and high thoughts are 
indispensable for developing wisdom and firmness of character. 

" Such an instruction must be complete in the sense that it must take 
account of all our aptitudes and all our circumstances ; it must be con- 
ducted, too, in a truly psychological spirit, that is to say, simply, 
lovingly, energetically, and calmly. Then, by its very nature, it pro- 
duces an enlightened and delicate feeling for everything true and good, 
and brings to light a number of accessory and dependent truths, which 
are forthwith accepted and assimilated by the human soul, even in the 
case of those who could not express these truths in words. 

" I believe that the first development of thought in the child is very 
much disturbed by a wordy system of teaching, which is not adapted 
either to his faculties or the circumstances of his life. According to my 
experience, success depends upon whether what is taught to children 
commends itself to them as true through being closely connected wiih 
their own personal observation and experience 

*' I knew no other order, method, or art, but that which resulted 
naturally from my children's conviction of my love for them, jior did I 
care to know any other. 

" Thus I subordinated the instruction of my children to a higher aim, 
which was to arouse and strengthen their best sentiments by the relations 
o'. eveiy-day life as they existed between themselves and me. . . 

"As a general rule I attached little importance to the s'udy of 
Mords, even when explanations of the ideas they represented were 
given. 

" 1 tried to connect study with manual labour, the school with the 
workshop, and make one thing of them. But I was the less able to do 
this as staff, material, and tools were all wanting. A short time only 
before the close of the establishment, a few children had begun to ipin ; 



332 PESTALOZZI. 

At Stanz : P.'s own account. 

and I saw clearly that, before any fusion could be effected, the two parts 
must be firmly established separately — study, that is, on the one hand, 
and labour on the other. 

" But in the work of the chilc'ren I was already inclined to care less 
for the immediate gain than for the physical training which, by develop- 
ing their strength and skill, was bound to supply them later with a 
means of livelihood. In the same way I considered that what is 
generally called the instruction of children should be merely an exercise 
of the faculties, and I felt it important to exercise the attention, 
observation, and memory first, so as to strengthen these faculties before 
calling into play the art of judging and reasoning ; this, in my opinion, 
was the best way to avoid turning out that sort of superficial and pre 
sumptuous talker, whose false judi;ments are often more fatal to the 
happiness and progress of humanity than the ignorance of simple people 
of good sense. 

" Guided by these principles, I sought less at first to teach my 
children to spell, read, and write than to make use of these exercises 
for the purpose of giving their minds as full and as varied a development 
as possii)le 

" In natural history they were very quick in corroborating what I 
taught them by their own personal observations on plants and animals. 
I am quite sure that, by continuing in this way, I should soon have 
been able not only to give them such a general acquaintance with the 
subject as would have been useful in any vocation, but also to put 
them in a position to carry on their education themselves by means of 
their daily observations and experiences ; and I should have been able 
to do all this without going outside the very restricted sphere to which 
they were confined by the actual circumstances of their lives. I hold it 
to be extremely important that men should be encouraged to learn by 
themselves and allowed to develop freely. It is in this way alone that 
the diversity of individual talent is produced and made evident. 

" I always made the children learn perfectly even the least important 
things, and I never allowed them to lose ground ; a word once learnt, for 
instance, was never to be forgotten, and a letter once well written never 
to be written badly again. I was very patient with all who were weak 
or slow, but very severe with those who did anything less well than they 
had done it before. 

" The number and inequality of my children rendered my task easier. 



PESTALOZZI. 333 



Value of the five months' experience. 

Just as in a family the eldest and cleverest child readily shows what he 
knows to his younger brothers and sisters, and feels proud and happy to 
be able to take his mother's place for a moment, so my children were 
delighted when they knew something that they could teach others. A 
sentiment of honour awoke in them, and they learned twice as well by 
making the younger ones repeat their words. In this way I soon had 
helpers and collaborators amongst the children themselves. When I 
was teaching them to spell difficult words by heart, I used to allow any 
child who succeeded in saying one properly to teach it to the others. 
These child-helpers, whom I had formed from the very outset, and who 
had followed my method step by step, were certainly much more useful 
. to me than any regular schoolmasters could have been. 

" I myself learned with the children. Our whole system was so 
simple and so natural that I should have had difficulty in finding a 
master who would not have thought it undignified to learn and teach as 
I was doing 

" You will hardly believe that it was the Capuchin friars and the nuns 
of the convent that showed the greatest sympathy with my work. Few 
people, except Truttman, took any active interest in it. Those ffom 
whom I had hoped most were too deeply engrossed with their high 
political affairs to think of our little institution as having the least degree 
of importance. 

" Such were my dreams ; but at the very moment that I seemed to be 
on the point of realizing them, I had to leave Stanz." 

§ 50. Heroic efforts rise above the measurement of time. 
As Byron has said, " A thought is capable of years," and it 
seldom happens that the nobleness of any human action 
depends on the time it lasts. Pestalozzi's five months' 
experiment at Stanz proved one of the most memorable 
events in the history of education. He was now completely 
satisfied that he saw his way to giving children a right 
education and " thus raising the beggar out of the dung-hill "; 
and seeing the right course he was urged by his love of the 
people into taking it. But how was he to set to work ? 
His notions of school instruction differed entirely from 



334 PESTALOZZI. 

P. a strange Schoolmaster. 

those of the teaching profession ; and even in the revolu- 
tionary age they had some reason for looking askance at 
this revolutionist. " He had everything against him," we 
read, "thick, indistinct speech, bad writing, ignorance of 
drawing, scorn of grammatical learning. He had studied 
various branches of natural history, but without any particular 
attention either to classification or terminology. He was 
conversant with the ordinary operations in arithmetic, but 
he would have had difficulty in getting through a really long 
sum in multiplication or division ; and he probably had 
never tried to work out a problem in geometry. For years 
this dreamer had read no books. But instead of the usual 
knowledge that any young man of ordinary talent can acquire 
in a year or two, he understood thoroughly what most 
masters were entirely ignorant of — the mind of man and the 
law-s of its development, human affections and the art of 
arousing and ennobling them. He seemed to have almost 
an intuitive insight into the development of human nature, 
and was never tired of contemplating it." (C. Monnard in 
R.'s Guimps, p. 174-)* 

§ 51. This man wished to be a schoolmaster, but who 
would venture to entrust him with a school ? No one 
seemed willing to do this ; and he would have been at a 
loss where to turn had he not had influential friends at 
Burgdorf, a town not far from Bern. These got for him 
permission to teach, not indeed the children of burgesses but 

* As Pestalozzi wrote to Gessner {How Gertrude, &'c.) : " You see 
street -gossip is not always entirely wrong; I really could not write 
properly, nor read, nor reckon. But people always jump to wrong 
conclusions from such 'notorious facts.' At Stanz you saw that I 
could teach writing without myself being able to write properly." 
He here an'icipates a paradox of Jacotot's. 



PESTALOZZI. 335 



At Burgdorf. First official approval. 

the children of non-burgesses, seventy-three of whom used to 
assemble under a shoemaker in his house in the suburbs. 
With this arrangement, however, the shoemaker and the 
parents of the children were by no means satisfied. " If 
the burgesses Uke the new method," they said very 
reasonably, "let them try it on their own children." Their 
grumbling was heard, and permission to teach was withdrawn 
from Pestalozzi. 

§ 52. The check, however, was only temporary. His friends 
were wiser than the shoemaker, and they procured for him 
admission into the lowest class of the school for burghers' 
children. In this class there were about 25 children, boys 
and girls between the ages of 5 and 8. Here he proved 
that he was vastly different from a mere dreamer. After 
teaching these children in his own way for eight months he 
received the first official recognition of the merits of his 
system. The Burgdorf School Commission after the usual 
examination, wrote a public letter to Pestalozzi, in which they 
said : '* The surprising progress of your little scholars of 
various capacities shews plainly that every one is good for 
something, if the teacher knows how to get at his abilities 
and develop them according to the laws of psychology. By 
your method of teaching you have proved how to lay the 
groundwork of instruction in such a way that it may afterwards 
support what is built on it. . . Between the ages of 5 
and 8, a period in which according to the system of torture 
enforced hitherto, children have learnt to know their letters, 
to spell and read, your scholars have not only accomplished 
all this with a success as yet unknown, but the best of them 
have already distingufshed themselves by their good writing, 
drawing, and calculating. In them all you have been able 
so to arouse and excite a hking for history, natural history, 



336 PESTALOZZI. 



A child's notion of P.'s teaching. 

mensuration, geography, &c., that thus future teachers must 
find their task a far easier one if they only know how to 
make good use of the preparatory stage the children have 
gone through with you" (Morf, Pt. I, p. 223). 

§ 53. In consequence of this report, Pestalnzzi in June 
1800 was made master of the second school of Burgdorf, a 
school numbering about 70 boys and girls from 10 to 16 
years old. With them Peslalozzi did not get on so well. 
Ramsauer, a poor boy of 10 who afterwards helped Pestalozzi 
at Yverdun and became one of his best teachers, has left us 
his remembrances. Two things seemed clear to the child's 
mind : ist, that their teacher was very kind but very unhappy ; 
2nd, that the pupils did not learn anything and behaved very 
badly. Many schoolmasters have smiled in derision at this 
account of Pestalozzi's actual teaching; but in reading it 
several things should be borne in mind. First Ramsauer as 
a child would have a keen eye and good memory for the 
master's eccentricities ; but how far the teaching succeeded 
he could not judge, for he did not know what it aimed at. 
Then again he saw that Pestalozzi's zeal was for the whole 
school, not for individual scholars. But the child who knew 
of nothing beyond Burgdorf could not tell that Pestalozzi 
was thinking not so much of the children of Burgdorf as of 
the children of Europe. For Burgdorf— whether it was 
pleased to honour or to dismiss Pestalozzi — could not contain 
him. His aims extended beyond the town, beyond canton 
Bern, beyond Switzerland even ; and he was consumed with 
zeal to bring about a radical change in elementary education 
throughout Europe. The truth which was burning within 
him he has himself expressed as follows : 

" If we desire to aid the poor man, the very lowest among 
the people, this can be done in one way only, that is, by 



PESTALOZZT. 337 



P. engineering a new road. 



changing his schools into true places of education, in which 
the moral, intellectual, and physical powers which God has put 
into our nature may be drawn out, so that the man may be 
enabled to live a life such as a man should live, contented 
in himself and satisfying other people. Thus and only thus 
does the man, whom in God's wide world nobody helps and 
nobody can help, learn to help himself." " The public 
common school-coach throughout Europe must not simply be 
better horsed, but still more it must be turned round and be 
brought on to an entirely new road." (Quoted by Morf, P. 
I, p. 211.) 

§ 54. Pestalozzi was now working heart and soul at the 
engineering of this " new road." His grand successes 
hitherto had been gained more by the heart than by the 
head; but the school course must draw out the faculties of 
the head as well as of the heart. Pestalozzi made all 
instruction start from what children observed for themselves. 
" I laid special stress," he says, " on just what usually affected 
their senses. And as I dwelt much on elementary knowledge, 
I wanted to know when the child receives its first lesson, 
and I soon came to the conviction that the first hour of 
learning dates from birth. From the very moment that the 
child's senses open to the impressions of nature, nature 
teaches it. Its new Hfe is but the faculty, now come to 
maturity, of receiving impressions ; it is the awakening of 
the germs now perfect which will go on using all their forces 
and energies to secure the development of their proper 
organisation ; it is the awakening of the animal now complete 
which will and shall become a man. So the sole instruction 
given to the human being consists merely in the art of giving 
a helping hand to this natural tendency towards its proper 
development ; and this art consists essentially in the means 

X 



338 PERTALOZZI. 



Psychologizing instruction. 



of putting the child's impressions in connexion and harmony 
with the precise degree of development the child has 
reached. There must be then in the impressions to be 
gi\'en him by instruction, a regular gradation ; and the 
beginning and the progress of his various knowledges mu'-t 
exactly correspond with the beginning and increase in his 
powers as they are developed. From this I soon saw that 
this gradation must be ascertained for all the branches of 
human knowledge, especially for those fundamental notions 
from which our thinking power takes its rise. On such 
principles and no others is it possible to construct real school 
books and books about teaching " ( J Vie Gertrude &c.. Letter I.). 
§ 55. In endeavouring to put teaching, as he said, " on a 
psychological basis," Pestalozzi compared it to a mechanism. 
On one occasion when expounding his views, he was 
interrupted by the exclamation, "Vous voulez m^caniser 
I'education ! " Pestalozzi was weak in French, and he took 
these words to mean, " You wish to get at the mechanism 
of education." He accordingly assented, and was in his 
turn misunderstood. Soon afterwards he endeavoured to 
express the new thing by a new word and said, " Ich will 
den menschlichen Unterricht psychologi'^ieren; I wish to 
psychologise instruction," and this he cxjjlains to mean 
that he sought to make instruction fall in with the eternal 
laws which govern the development of the human intellect 
(Morf, I, p. 227). But this was a task which no one man 
could accomplish, not even Pestalozzi. The eternal laws 
which govern the development of mind have not been 
completely ascertained even after investigations carried on 
during thousands of years ; and Pestalozzi did not know 
what had been established by previous thinkers. He made 
a gigantic effort to find both the laws and their application, 



PESTALOZZI. 339 



School course. Singing ; and the beautiful. 

but if he had continued to stand alone he could have done 
but little. Happily he attracted to him some young and 
vigorous assistants, who caught his enthusiasm and worked 
in his spirit. They did much, but there was one thing the 
Master could not communicate — his genius. 

§ 56. Just at this time, before Pestalozzi found associates 
in his work, he drew up for a " Society of Friends of 
Education" an account of his method; and this begins 
with the words I have already quoted, " I want to psycholo- 
gise education." Basing all instruction on Anschammg 
(which is nearly equivalent to the child's own observation), 
he explains how this may be used for a series of exercises, 
and he takes as the general elements of culture the fol- 
lowing : language, drawing, writing, arithmetic, and the art 
of measuring. In the education of the poor he would lay 
special stress .on the importance of two things, then and 
since much neglected, viz., singing and the sense of the 
beautiful. The mother's cradle song should begin a series 
leading up to hymns of praise to God. Education should 
develop in all a sense of the beauties of Nature. " Nature 
is full of lovely sights, yet Europe has done nothing either 
to awaken in the poor a sense for these beauties, or to 
arrange them in such a way as to produce a series of 
impressions capable of developing this sense. . . If 
ever popular education should cease to be the barbarous 
absurdity it now is, and put itself into harmony with the 
real needs of our nature, this want will be supplied." 
(R.'s Guimps, 186.) 

§ 57. In the last year of the eighteenth century (1800) 
l*estalozzi was toiling away, constant to his purpose but not 
clearly seeing the road before him. In March, 1800, he 
wrote to Zschokke: " For thirty years my life has been a well- 



340 PESTALOZZI. 



P.'s poverty. Kruesi joins him. 



nigh hopeless struggle against the most frightful poverty. . . 
For thirty years I have had to forego many of the barest 
necessaries of life, and have hnd to shun the society of my 
fellow-men from sheer lack of decent clothes. Many and 
many a time have I gone without a dinner and eaten in bitter- 
ness a dry crust of bread on the road at a time when even the 
poorest were seated round a table. All this I have suffered 
and am still suffering to-day, and with no other object than 
the realization of my plans for helping the poor" (R.'s 
Guimps, 189). It was clear that he could not help others 
till he himself got help; and he now did get just the help 
he wanted, an assistant who though a schoolmaster was, 
strange to say, perfectly ready to learn, and to throw himself 
into carrying out another man's ideas. This was Hermann 
Kruesi, a man twenty-five years old, who from the age of 
18 had been master of the village school at Gais in 
Appenzell. In consequence of the war between the French 
and Austrians, Appenzell was now reduced to a state of 
famine, and bands of children were sent off to other 
cantons to escape starvation. Fischer, a friend of Pesta- 
lozzi's, and himself an educationist taught by Salzmann 
{sitpra 289), wrote from Burgdorf to the pastor of Gais, 
offering to get thirty children taken in by the people of 
Burgdorf, and asking that they might be sent with some one 
who would look after them in the day-time and teach them. 
In answer to this invitation Kruesi, after a week's march, 
entered Burgdorf with a troop of little ones. The children 
were drawn up in an open place, and benevolent people 
chose which they would adopt. Kruesi was taken into the 
Castle which the Government had made over partly to 
Fischer, partly to Pestalozzi. In it Kruesi opened a day- 
school. Fischer soon afterwards died \ and Pestalozzi 



PESTALOZZI. 341 



P.'s assistants. The Buigdorf Institute. 

proposed to Kruesi, who had become entirely converted to 
his views, that they should unite and together carry on the 
school in the Castle, By a decree of 23rd July, 1800, the 
Executive Council granted to Pestalozzi the gratuitous use 
of as much of the Castle and garden as he needed, and 
thus was established Pestalozzi's celebrated Institute at 
Burgdorf 

§ 58. Very soon Kruesi enlisted other helpers who had 
read Leona?-d and Gertrude^ viz., Tobler and Buss, and 
this is his account of the party : " Our society thus con- 
sisted of four very different men. . . the founder, whose 
chief reputation was that of a dreamy writer, incapable in 
practical life, and three young men, one [Tobler] a private 
tutor whose youth had been much neglected, who had 
begun to study late, and whose pedagogic efforts had never 
produced the results his character and talents seemed to 
promise ; another [Buss], a bookbinder, who devoted 
his leisure to singing and drawing ; and a third [Kruesi 
himself], a village schoolmaster who carried out the duties 
of his office as best he could without having been in any 
way prepared for them. Those who looked on this group of 
men, scarce one of them with a home of his own, naturally 
formed but a small opinion of their capabilities. And yet 
our work succeeded, and won the public confidence beyond 
the expectations of those who knew us, and even beyond 
our own " (R,'s Guimps, 304). 

§ 59. With assistance from the Government there was 
added to the united schools of Pestalozzi and Kruesi a 
training class for teachers ; and elementary teachers were 
sent to spend a month at Burgdorf and learn of Pestalozzi, 
as years afterwards they were sent to the same town to 
iearn of Froebel. This Institute opened in January, 1801, 



342 PESTALOZZI. 



Success of the Burgdorf Institute. 

and had nearly three years of complete success. In it was 
carried out Pestalozzi's notion that there should be " no 
gulf between the home and the school." On one occasion 
a parent visiting the establishment exclaimed, " Why, this 
is not a school but a family 1" and Pestalozzi declared 
that this was the highest praise he could give it. The bond 
which united them all, both teachers and scholars, was love 
of " Father Pestalozzi." Want of space kept the number of 
children below a hundred, and these enjoyed great freedom 
and worked away without rewards and almost without 
punishments. Both public reports and private speak very 
highly of the results. In June, 1802, the President of the 
Council of Public Education in Bern declares : " Pestalozzi 
has discovered the real and universal laws of all elementary 
teaching." A visitor, Charles Victor von Bonstetten, writes : 
"The children know little, but what they know, they know 
well. . . They are very happy and evidently take great 
pleasure in their lessons, which says a great deal for the 
method. . . As it will be long before there is another 
Pestalozzi, I fear that the rich harvest his discovery seems 
to promise will be reserved for future ages." 

The success of the method was specially conspicuous in 
arithmetic. A Niirnberg merchant who came prejudiced 
against Pestalozzi was much impressed and has acknow- 
ledged : " I was amazed when I saw these children treating 
the most complicated calculations of fractions as the simplest 
thing in the world." 

§ 60. Up to this point Pestalozzi may be said to have 
gained by the disposition to " reform " or revolutionise 
everything, which had prevailed in Switzerland since 1798. 
But from the reaction which now set in he suffered more 
than he had gained. Switzerland sent deputies to Paris to 



PESTALOZZI. 343 



Reaction. Pestalozzi arid Napoleon I. 

discuss under the direction of the First Consul Bonaparte 
what should be their future form of Government. Among 
these deputies Pestalozzi was elected, and he set off thinking 
more of the future of tlie schools than of the future of the 
Government. At Paris he asked for an interview with 
Bonaparte, but destruction being in his opinion a much 
higher art than instruction, the First Consul said he could 
not be bothered about questions of A, B, C. He, however, 
deputed Monge to hear what Pestalozzi had to say, but the 
mathematician seems to have agreed with some English 
authorities that "there was nothing in Pestalozzi."* On his 
return to Switzerland Pestalozzi was asked by Buss, " Did 
you see Bonaparte?" "No," replied Pestalozzi, "I did not 
see Bonaparte and Bonaparte did not see me." His pre- 
sumption in thus putting himself on an equality with the 
great conqueror seems to have taken away the breath of his 
contemporaries: but "the whirligig of time brings in his 
revenges," and before the close of the century Europe 
already thinks more in amount, and immeasurably more in 
respect, of Pestalozzi than of Bonaparte. 

§ 6 1. As a result of the reaction the Government of 
United Switzerland ceased to exist, and the Cantons were 
restored. This destroyed Pestalozzi's hopes of Government 
support, and even turned his Institute out of doors The 

* Years afterwards Napoleon, though he could not foresee Sedan, got 
a notion that after all there was something in Pestalozzi ; and that the 
aim of the system was to put the freedom and development of the 
individual in the place of the mechanical routine of the old schools, 
which tended to produce a mass of dull uniformity. With this aim, as 
Guimps says, Napoleon was quite out of sympathy, and whenever the 
subject was mentioned he would say, "The Pestalozzians are Jesuits "j 
thus very inaccurately expressing an accurate notion that there was 
more in them than could be understood at the first glance. 



344 PESTALOZZI. 



Fellenberg. P. goes to Yverdun. 

Castle of Burgdorf was at once demanded for the Prefect of 
the District ; but Pestalozzi was offered an old convent at 
Miinchenbuchsee near Bern, and thither he was forced t^ 
migrate. 

§ 62. Close to Miinchenbuchsee was Hofwyl where was 
the agricultural institution of Emmanuel Fellenberg. 
Fellenberg and Pestalozzi were old friends and corres- 
pondents, and as they had much regard for each other and 
Fellenberg was as great in administration as Pestalozzi in 
ideas, there seemed a chance of their benefiting by co- 
operation ; but this could not be. The teachers desired 
that the administration should be put into the hands of 
P'ellenberg, and this was done accordingly, " not without 
my consent," says Pestalozzi, " but to my profound mortifi- 
cation." He could not work with this " man of iron," as he 
calls Fellenberg; so he left Miinchenbuchsee and accepting 
one of several invitations he settled in the Castle of Yverdun 
near the lake of Neuchatel. Within a twelvemonth he was 
followed by his old assistants, who had found government 
by Fellenberg less to their taste than no-government by 
Pestalozzi. 

§ 63, Thus arose the most celebrated Institute of which 
we read in the history of education. For some years its 
success seemed prodigious. Teachers came from all quarters, 
many of them sent by the Governments of the countries to 
which they belonged, that they might get initiated into the 
Pestalozzian system. Children too were sent from great 
distances, some of them being intrusted to Pestalozzi, some 
of them living with their own tutor in Yverdun and only 
attending the Institute during the day. The wave of 
enthusiasm for the new ideas seemed to carry everything 
before it ; but there is nothing stable in a wave, and when 



PESTALOZZI. 345 



A portrait of Pestalozzi. 



the enthusiasm has subsided disappointment follows. This 
was the case at Yverdun, and Pestalozzi outlived his Institute. 
But the principles on which he worked and the spirit in 
which he worked could not pass away; and, at least in 
Germany, all elementary schoolmasters acknowledge how 
much they are indebted to his teaching. 

§ 64. Of the state of things in the early days of the 
Institute we have a very lively account written for his own 
children by Professor Vuillemin, who entered it in 1805 as a 
child of eight, and was in it for two years. From this I extract 
the following portrait of Pestalozzi : " Imagine, my children, 
a very ugly man with rough bristling hair, his face scarred 
with small-pox and covered with freckles, an untidy beard, 
no neck-tie, his breeches not properly buttoned and coming 
down to his stockings, which in their turn descended on to 
his great thick shoes ; fancy him panting and jerking as he 
walked ; then his eyes which at one time opened wide to 
send a flash of lightning, at another were half closed as if 
engaged on what was. going on within ; his features now 
expressing a profound sadness and now again the most 
peaceful happiness; his speech either slow or hurried, either 
soft and melodious or bursting forth like thunder ; imagine 
the man and you have him whom we used to call our Father 
Pestalozzi. Such as I have sketched him for you we loved 
him ; we all loved him, for he loved us all ; we loved him 
so warmly that when some time passed without our seeing 
him, we were quite troubled about it, and when he again 
appeared we could not take our eyes off him " (Guimps, 

315)- 

§ 65. At this time he was no less loved by his assistants, 
who put up with any quarters that could be found for them, 
and received no salary. We read that the money paid by 



346 PESTALOZZL 



Prussia adopts Pestalozzianism. 

the scholars was kept in the room of " the head of the family"; 
every master could get the key, and when they required 
clothes they took from these funds just the sum requisite. 
This system, or want of system, went on for some time with- 
out abuse. As Vuillemin says, it was like a return to the 
early days of the Christian Church. 

§ 66. We have seen that the first Emperor Napoleon 
"could not be bothered about questions of A, B, C." His 
was the pride that goes before a fall. On the other hand 
the Prussian Government which he brought to the dust in 
the battle of Jena (1806) had the wisdom to perceive that 
children will become men, and that the nature of the 
histruction they receive will in a great measure determine 
what kind of men they turn out. How was Prussia again 
to raise its head? Its rulers decided that it was by the 
education of the people. " We have lost in territory," said 
the king; "our power and our credit abroad have fallen; 
but we must and will go to work to gain in power and in 
credit at home. It is for this reason that I desire above 
everything that the greatest attention be paid to the educa- 
tion of the people" (Guimps, 319). About the same time 
the Queen (Louisa) wrote in her private diary, " I am reading 
Leona)-d and Gertrude, and I delight in being transported 
into the Swiss village. If I could do as I liked I should 
take a carriage and start for Switzerland to see Pestalozzi ; 
I should warmly shake him by the hand, and my eyes filled 
with tears would speak my gratitude . . . With what goodness, 
with what zeal, he labours for the welfare of his fellow- 
creatures ! Yes, in the name of humanity, I thank him with 
my whole heart." 

So in the day of humiliation Prussia seriously went to 
work at the education of the people, and this she did on 



PESTALOZZI. 347 

Ritter and others at Yverdun. 

the lines pointed out by Pestalozzi. To him they were 
directed by their philosopher Fichte, who in his Addresses 
to the German Nation (deUvered at Berlin 1807-8) declared 
tliat education was the only means of raising a nation, and 
that all sound reform of public instruction must be based 
on the principles of Pestalozzi. 

To bring these principles to bear on popular education, 
the Prussian Government sent seventeen young men for a 
three years' course to Pestalozzi's Institute, " vv-here," as the 
Minister said in a letter to Pestalozzi, " they will be pre- 
pared not only in mind and judgment, but also in heart, 
for the noble vocation which they are to follow, and will 
be filled with a sense of the holiness of their task, and with 
new zeal for the work to which you have devoted your 
hfe." 

§ 67. Among the eminent men who were drawn to 
Yverdun were some who afterwards did great things in 
education, as e.g., Karl Ritter, Karl von Raumer the his- 
torian of education, the philosopher Herbart, and a man 
who was destined to have more influence than anyone, 
except perhaps Pestalozzi himself — I mean Friedrich Froebel. 
Ritter's testimony is especially striking. " I have seen," 
says he, " more than the Paradise of Switzerland, for I have 
seen Pestalozzi, and recognised how great his heart is, and 
how great his genius ; never have I been so filled with a 
sense of the sacredness of my vocation and the dignity ot 
human nature as in the days I spent with this noble man. 
. . . . Pestalozzi knew less geography than a child in 
one of our primary schools, yet it was from him that 1 
gained my chief knowledge of this science ; for it was in 
listening to him that I first conceived the idea of the natural 
method. It was he who opened the way to me, and I take 



348 PESTALOZZI. 

Causes of failure at Yverdun. 

pleasure in attributing whatever value my work may have 
entirely to him." 

§ 68. At this time we read glowing accounts of the 
healthy and happy life of the children ; and throughout 
Pestalozzi never lost a single pupil by illness. With a body 
of very able assistants, instruction was carried on for ten 
hours out of the twenty-four ; but in these hours there was 
reckoned the time spent in drill, gymnastics, hand-work, 
and singing. The monotony of school-life was also broken 
by frequent " festivals." 

§ 69. And yet the Institute had taken into it the seeds 
of its own ruin. There were several causes of failure," 
though these were not visible till the house was divided 
against itself. 

§ 70. First, Pestalozzi based the morality and discipline 
of the school on the relations of family life. He would be 
the "father" of all the children. At Burgdorf this relation 
seemed a reality, but it completely failed at Yverdun when 
the Institute became, from the number of the pupils and 
their differences in language, habits, and antecedents, a 
Httle world. The pupils still called him " Father Pesta- 
lozzi," but he could no longer know them as a father should 
know his children. Thus the discipline of affection slowly 
disappeared, and there was no school discipline to take its 
place. 

§ 71. Next, we can see that even at Burgdorf, and still 
more at Yverdun, Pestalozzi was attempting to do impossi- 
bilities. According to his system, the faculties of the child 
were to be developed in a natural unbroken order, and the 
first exercises were to give the child the power of sur- 
mounting later difficulties by its own exertions. But this 
education could not be started at any age, and yet children 
of every age and every country were received into the 



PESTALOZZI. 349 



Report made by Father Girard. 

Institution, It was not likely that the fresh comers could 
be made to understand that they " knew nothing," and must 
start over again on a totally different road. The teachers 
might take such pupils to the water of " sense-impressions," 
but they could not inspire the inclination to drink, nor 
induce the lad to learn what he supposed himself to know 
already. {Cfr. supra p, 64, § 4.) 

§ 72. But there was a greater mischief at work than 
either of these. In his discourse to the members of the 
Institution on New Year's Day, 1808, Pestalozzi surprised 
them all by his gloom. He had had a coffin brought in, 
and he stood beside it. " This work," said he, " was 
founded by love, but love has disappeared from our midst." 
This was only too true, and the discord was more deeply 
rooted than at first appeared. Among the brood of Pesta- 
lozzians there was a Catholic shepherd lad from Tyrol, 
Joseph Schmid by name, and he, in the end, proved a 
veritable cuckoo. As he shewed very marked ability in 
mathematics, he became one of the assistant masters ; and 
a good deal of the fame of the Institution rested on the 
performances of his pupils. But his ideas differed totally 
from those of his colleagues, especially from those of 
Niederer, a clergyman with a turn for philosophy, who had 
become Pestalozzi's chief exponent. 

§ 73. After Pestalozzi's gloomy speech, the masters, with 
the exception of Schmid, urged Pestalozzi to apply for a 
Government inquiry into the state of the Institution. This 
Pestalozzi did, and Commissioners were appointed, among 
them an educationist, Pere Girard of Freiburg, by whom 
the Report was drawn up. The Report was not favourable. 
Pere Girard was by no means inclined to sit at the feet of 
Pestalozzi, as he had principles of his own. Pestalozzi, lie 



350 PESTALOZZI. 



Girard's mistake. Schmid in flight. 



thought, laid far too much stress on mathematics, and he 
drew from him a statement that everything taught to a child 
should seem as certain as that two and two made four. 
" Then," said Girard, " if I had thirty children I would not 
intrust you with one of them. You could not teach him 
that I was his father." Thus the Report, though very 
friendly in tone, was by no means friendly in spirit. The 
Commissioners simply compared the performances of the 
scholars with what pupils of the same age could do in good 
schools of the ordinary type, and Pere Girard stated, though 
not in the Report, that the Institution was inferior to the 
Cantonal School of Aargau. But the comparison of these 
incommensurables only shews that Girard was not capable 
of understanding what was going on at Yverdun. Indeed, 
he asserts "not only that the mother-tongue was neglected," 
but also that the children, " though they had reached a high 
pitch of excellence in abstract mathematics, were incon- 
ceivably weak in all ordinary practical calculations." This 
is absurd. In Pestalozzian teaching the abstract never 
went before ordinary practical calculations. The good 
Father evidently blunders, and takes " head-reckoning " for 
abstract, and pen or pencil arithmetic for practical work. 
Reckoning with slate or paper is no doubt " ordinary," but 
a distinction has often to be drawn between what is ordinary 
and what is practical. 

§ 74. Soon after this the disputes between Schmid and 
his colleagues waxed so fierce that Schmid was virtually 
driven away. In 1810 he left Yverdun, and declaied the 
Institution " a disgrace to humanity." Great was the dis- 
order into which the Institution now fell from having over 
it only a genius with "an unrivalled incapacity to govern." 
The days which " remind us of the early Church " were no 



PF.STAT.OZZT. 35 1 



Schmid's return. P.'s fame found useful. 

more, and financial difficulties naturally followed them. 
For the next five years things went from bad to worse, and 
the masters were then driven to the desperate, and, as it 
proved, the fatal step of inviting the able and strong-willed 
Schmid back again. He came in 181 5, he acquired entire 
c;onlrol over Pestalozzi, and drove from him all his most 
faithful adherents, among them not only Niederer, who had 
invited the return of his rival, but even Kruesi and the 
faithful servant, Elizabeth Naef, now Mrs. Kruesi, the 
widow of Kruesi's brother. Pestalozzi's grandson married 
Schmid's sister, and thus united with him by family ties, 
Schmid took entire possession of the old man and kept it 
till the end. His former colleagues seem to have been 
deceived in their estimate both of Schmid's mtegrity and 
ability. He completed the ruin of the Institution, and he 
was finally expelled from Yverdun by the Magistrates. 

§ 75. But while Pestalozzi seemed falling lower and lower 
to the eyes of the inhabitants of Yverdun, and so had little 
honour in his own country, his fame was spreading all over 
Europe. Of this Yverdun was to reap the benefit. In 
1 81 3-14, Austrian troops marched across Switzerland to 
invade France. In January, 18 14, the Casde and other 
buildings in Yverdun were " requisitioned " for a militaiy 
hospital, many of the Austrian soldiers being down with 
typhus fever. In a great fright the Municipality sent ofi' 
two deputies to headquarters, then at Basel, to petition that 
this order might be withdrawn. As the order threatened 
the destruction of his Institution, Pestalozzi went with them, 
and it was entirely to him they owed their success. On 
their return they reported that " no military hospital would 
be established at Yverdun, and that M. Pestalozzi had been 
received with most extraordinary favour." 



352 PESTALOZZI. 



Dr. Bell's visit. Death of Mrs. Pestalozzi. 

§ 75. On this occasion Pestalozzi took the opportunity of 
preaching to the Emperor Alexander on the necessity of 
establishing good schools and of emancipating the serfs. 
The Emperor took the lecture in good part, and allowed the 
l)hilanthropist to drive him into a corner and "button-hole" 
him. 

§ 76. In 1815 Pestalozzi received a visit from an 
Englishman, or more accurately Scotsman — Dr. Bell, who, 
however, like most of our compatriots, could find nothing 
in Pestalozzi. Whatever we may think of Bell as an 
educationist, he was certainly a poor prophet. On leaving 
Yverdun he said, " In another twelve years mutual instruction 
will be adopted by the whole world and Pestalozzi's method 
will be forgotten."* 

§ 77. In December, 18 15, Pestalozzi was thrown more 
completely into the power of Schmid by losing the only 
companion from whom nothing but death could separate 
him— his wife. At the funeral Pestalozzi, standing by the 
coffin, and as if heard by her whose earthly remains were in 
it, ran over the disasters and trials they had passed through 
together, and the sacrifices she had made for him. " What 
in those days of afiliction," said he, "gave us strength to 
bear our troubles and recover hope?" and taking up a Bible 
he went on, " This is the source whence you drew, whence 
we both drew courage, strength, and peace." 

* Pestalozzi had from this country some more discerning visitors, e.g., 
J. P. Greaves, to whom Pestalozzi addressed Letters, which were 
lianslated and published in this country ; also Dr. Mayo, who was at 
Vverdun with his pupils for three years from 1818 and afterwards con- 
ducted a celebrated Pestalozzian school at Cheam. Dr. Mayo in 1S26 
lectured on Pestalozzi's system at the Royal Institution. Sir Jas. Kny- 
Shuttleworth and Mr. Tufnell also drew attention to it in the "Minutes 
of Council on Education." 



PESTALOZZI. 353 



Works republished. Clinrly. Yverdun left. 

§ 78. The " death agony of the Institution," as Guimps 
calls it, lasted for some years, but in this gloomy period 
there are only two incidents I will mention. The first is 
I he publication of Pestalozzi's writings, for which Schmid 
and Pestalozzi sought subscriptions ; and the appeal was 
so cordially answered that Pestalozzi received ;!^2,ooo. 
This sum he wished to devote to the carrying out of a plan 
he had always cherished of an orphanage at Neuhof ; but 
the money seems to have melted we do not know how. 

§ 79. The other incident is that of Pestalozzi's last 
success. In spite of Schmid he would open a school for 
twelve neglected children at Clindy, a hamlet near Yverdun. 
Here he produced results like those which had crowned his 
first efforts at Neuhof, Stanz, and Burgdorf. Old, absent- 
minded, and incapable as he seemed in ordinary affairs, he, 
as though by enchantment, gained the attention and the 
affection of the children, and bent them entirely to his will. 
In a few months the number of children had risen to thirty, 
and wonderful progress had been made. Clindy at once 
became celebrated. Pestalozzi was induced to admit some 
children whose friends paid for them, and Schmid then 
persuaded the old man to remove the school into the Castle. 

§ 80. In 1824 the Institution, which had lasted for twenty 
years, was finally closed, and Pestalozzi went to spend his 
remaining days (nearly three years as it proved) at Neuhof, 
which was then in the hands of his grandson. The yeai 
before his death he visited an orphanage conducted on his 
principles by Zeller at Beuggen near Rheinfelden. The 
children sang a poem of Goethe's quoted in Leonard and 
Gertrude, and had a crown of oak ready to put on the old 
man's head ; but this he declined. " I am not worthy of it," 
said he, "keep it for innocence." 



354 PESTALOZZI. 



Death. New aim ; develop organism. 

§ 8i. On 17th February, 1827, at the age of eighty-one, 
Pestalozzi fell asleep. 



§ 82. " The reform needed," said Pestalozzi, " is not 
that the school-coach should be better horsed, but that it 
should be turned right round and started on a new track." 
This may seem a violent metaphor, but perhaps it is not 
more violent than the change that was (and in this country 
still is) necessary. Let us try to ascertain what is the right 
road according to Pestalozzi, and then see on what road the 
school-coach is now travelling. 

§ 83. The grand change advocated by Pestalozzi was a 
change of object. The main object of the school should 
not be to teach but to develop. 

§ 84. This change of object naturally brings many 
changes with it. Measured by their capacity for acquiriiig 
school knowledge and skill young children may be con- 
sidered, as one of H.M. Inspectors considered them, "the 
fag-end of the school." But if the school exists not to 
teach but to develop, young children, instead of being the 
" fag-end," become the most important part of all. In the 
development of all organisms more depends on the earlier 
than on the later stages ; and there is no reason to doubt 
that this law holds in the case of human beings. On this 
account, from the days of Pestalozzi educational science 
has been greatly, I may say mainly, concerned with young 
children. For the dominating thought has been that the 
young human being is an undeveloped organism, and that 
in education that organism is developed. So the essence of 
Pestalozzianism lies not so much in its method as in its aim, 
not more in what it does than in what it endeavours to do. 



PESTALOZZI. 355 

True dignity of man, 

§ 85. And thus it was that Pestalozzi (in Raumer's 
words) " compelled the scholastic worid to revise the whole 
of their task, to reflect on the nature and destiny of man, 
and also on the proper way of leading him from his youth 
towards that destiny." And it was his love of his fellow- 
creatures that raised him to this standpoint. He was moved 
by '"the enthusiasm of humanity." Consumed with grief 
for the degradation of the Swiss peasantry, he never lost 
faith in their true dignity as men, and in the possibility of 
raising them to a condition worthy of it. He cast about for 
the best means of thus raising them, and decided that it 
could be effected, not by any improvement in their outward 
circumstances, but by an education which should make them 
what their Creator intended them to be, and should give 
them the use and the consciousness of all their inborn 
faculties. " From my youth up," he says, " I felt what a 
high and indispensable human duty it is to labour for the 
poor and miserable ; . . . that he may attain to a 
consciousness of his own dignity through his feeling of the 
universal powers and endowments which he possesses 
awakened within him ; that he may not only learn to gabble 
over by rote the religious maxim that ' man is created in 
the image of God, and is bound to live and die as a child 
of God,' but may himself experience its truth by virtue of 
the Divine power within him, so that he may be raised, not 
only above the ploughing oxen, but also above the man in 
purple and silk who Hves unworthily of his high destiny" 
(Quoted in Barnard, p. 13). 

Again he says (and I quote at length on the point, as it 
is indeed the key to Pestalozzianism), " Why have I msisted 
so strongly on attention to early physical and intellectual 
education ? Because I consider these as merely leading to 



356 PESTALOZZI. 

Education for all. Mothers' part. Jacob's Ladder. 

a higher aim, to quahfy the human being for the free and 
full use of all the faculties implanted by the Creator, and 
to direct all these faculties towards the perfection of the 
whole being of man, that he may be enabled to act in 
his peculiar station as an instrument of that Alhwise and 
Almighty Power that has called him into life " (To 
Greaves, p. i6o). 

§ 86. Believing in this high aim of education, Pestalozzi 
required a proper early training for all alike. " Every 
human being," said he, "has a claim to a judicious develop- 
ment of his faculties by those to whom the care of his 
infancy is confided" {lb. p. 163). 

§ 87. Pestalozzi therefore most earnestly addressed him- 
self to mothers, to convince them of the power placed in 
their hands, and to teach them how to use it. "The 
mother is qualified, and qualified by the Creator Himself, 
to become the principal agent in the development of her 
child ; . . . and what is demanded of her is — a thinking 
love. . . . God has given to thy child all the faculties 
of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided — how 
shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? to 
whose service shall they be dedicated ? A question the 
answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to 
a life so dear to thee. . . . It is recorded that God 
opened the heavens to the patriarch of old, and showed him 
a ladder leading thither. This ladder is let down to every 
descendant of Adam ; it is offered to thy child. But he 
must be taught to climb it. And let him not attempt it by 
the cold calculations of the head, or the mere impulse of 
the heart; but let all these powers combine, and the noble 
enterprise will be crowned with success. These powers are 
already bestowed on him, but to thee it is givea to assist in 



PESTALOZZI. 357 



Educator only superintends. 



calling them forth " (To Greaves, p. 21). "Maternal love 
is the first agent in education. . . . Through it the 
child is led to love and trust his Creator and his Redeemer." 

§ 88. From the theory of development which lay at the 
root of Pestalozzi's views of education, it followed that th j 
imparting of knowledge and the training for special pursuits 
held only a subordinate position in his scheme. " Educa- 
tion, instead of merely considering what is to be imparted 
to children, ought to consider first what they may be said 
already to possess, if not as a developed, at least as an 
involved faculty capable of development. Or if, instead of 
speaking thus in the abstract, we will but recollect that it is 
to the great Author of life that man owes the possession, 
and is responsible for the use, of his innate faculties, 
education should not simply decide what is to be made of a 
child, but rather inquire what it was intended that he 
should become. What is his destiny as a created and 
responsible being ? What are his faculties as a rational and 
moral being ? What are the means for their perfection, and 
the end held out as the highest object of their efforts by the 
Almighty Father of all, both in creation and in the page of 
revelation ? " 

§ 89. Education, then, must consist " in a continual 
benevolent superintendence^ with the object of calling forth all 
the faculties which Providence has implanted; and its 
province, thus enlarged, will yet be with less difficulty 
surveyed from one point of view, and will have more of a 
systematic and truly philosophical character, than an in- 
coherent mass of ' lessons ' — arranged without unity of 
principle, and gone through without interest — which too 
often usurps its name." 

The educator's task then is to superintend and promote 



358 PESTALOZZI. 



First, moral development. 



the child's development, morally, intellectually, and physi« 
cally. 

§ 90. " The essential principle of education is not 
teaching," said Pestalozzi ; " it is love " (R.'s G., 289). 
Again he says, "The child loves and believes before it 
thinks and acts" {lb. 378). And in a very striking passage 
{lb. 329), where he compares the development of the 
various powers of a human being to the development of a 
tree, he says, " These forces of the heart— faith and love — 
are in the formation of immortal man what the root is for 
the tree." So, according to Pestalozzi, a child without faith 
and love can no more grow up to be what he should be 
than a tree can grow without a root. Apart from this vital 
truth there can be no such thing as Pestalozzianism. 

" Ah yet when all is thought and said 
The heart still overrules the head. " 

It is our hearts and affections that lead us right or wrong 
far more than our intellects. In advocating the training of 
the minds of the people. Lord Derby once remarked that as 
Chairman of Quarter Sessions he had found most of the 
culprits brought before him were stupid and ignorant. It 
certainly cannot be denied that the commonest kind of 
criminal is bad in every way. He has his body ruined 
by debauchery, his intellect almost in abeyance, and his 
heart and affections set on what is vile and degrading. If 
you could cultivate his intellect you would certainly raise 
him out of the lowest and by far the largest of the criminal 
classes. But he might become a criminal of a type less 
disgusting in externals, but in reality far more dangerous. 
The most atrocious miscreant of our time, if not of all time, 
was a man who contrived a machine to sink ships in mid- 
ocean, his only object being to gain a sum of money on a 



PESTALOZZI. 359 



Moral and religious the same. 



false insurance. This man was a type of the elite of 
criminals, had received an intellectual training, and could 
not have been described by Lord Derby as ignorant or 
stupid. 

§ 91. Pestalozzi then, much as he valued the develop- 
ment of the intellect, put first the moral and religious 
influence of education ; and with him moral and religious 
were one and the same. He protested against the ordinary 
routine of elementary education, because " everywhere in it 
the flesh predominated over the spirit, everywhere the divine 
element was cast into the shade, everywhere selfishness and 
the passions were taken as the motives of action, everywhere 
mechanical habits usurped the place of intelligent spon- 
taneity " (R.'s G., 470). Education for the people must be 
different to this. " Man does not live by bread alone ; 
every child needs a religious development ; every child 
needs to know how to pray to God in all simplicity, 
but with faith and love" (R.'s G., 378). " If the religious 
element does not run through the whole of education, this 
element will have little influence on the life; it remains 
formal or isolated " * {lb. 381). And Pestalozzi sums up the 
essentials of popular education in the words : " The child 

* The disciple is not above his master, and if parents and teachers are 
without sympathy and religious feeling the children will also be without 
faith and love. This cannot be urged too strongly on those who have 
charge of the young. But there is no test by which we can ascertain 
that a master has these essential qualifications. As in the Christian 
ministry the untit can be shut out only by their own consciences. But 
let no one think to understand education if he loses sight of what Joseph 
Payne has called " Pestalozzi's simple but profound discovery — the 
teacher must have a heart." "Soul is kindled only by soul," says 
Carlyle ; " to teach religion the first thing needful and also the last ai\d 
only thing is finding of a man who has religion. All else follows." 



360 PESTALOZZI. 



Second, intellectual development, 

accustomed from his earliest years to pray, to think, and to 
work, is already more than half educated " (^Ib. 381). 

§ 92. Here we see the main requisites. First the child 
must pray with faith and love. Next he must think. 

" The child must think ! " exclaims the schoolmaster : 
" Must he not learn ? " To which Pestalozzi would have 
replied, " Most certainly he must." Learning was not in 
Pestalozzi's estimation as in Locke's, the " last and least " 
thing, but learning was with him something very different 
from the learning imparted by the ordinary schoolmaster. 
Pestalozzi was very imperfectly acquainted with the thoughts 
and efforts of his predecessors, but the one book on educa- 
tion which he had studied had freed him from the "idols " 
of the schoolroom. Tliis book was the Emile of Rousseau, 
and from it he came no less than Rousseau himself to despise 
the learning of the schoolmaster. But when he had to face 
the problem of organizing a course of education for the 
people, Pestalozzi did not agree with Rousseau that the 
first twelve years should be spent in *' losing time." No, 
the children must learn, but ihey must learn in such a way 
as to develop all the powers of the mind. And so Pestalozzi 
was led to what he considered his great discovery, viz., that 
all instruction must be based on " Anschauung." 

§ 93. The Germans, who have devoted so much thought 
and care and effort to education, greatly honour Pestalozzi,* 
and as his disciples aim at making all elementary instruction 



* In 1872, a Congress in which more than 10,000 German elementary 
teachers were represented, petitioned the Prussian Government for " the 
organization of training schools in accordance with the pedagogic 
principles of Pestalozzi, which formerly enjoyed so much favour iij 
Prussia and so visibly contributed to the regeneration of the country," 



PESTALOZZI. 361 

Learning by " intuition." 

" anschaulich." We English have troubled ourselves so 
little about Pestalozzi, or, I might say, about the theory of 
education, that we have not cared to get equivalent words 
for Anschauung and anschaulich. For Anschauung " sense- 
impression " has lately been tried ; but this is in two ways 
defective; for (i) there may be " Anschauungen " beyond 
the range of the senses, and (2) there is in an " Anschauung " 
an active as well as a passive element, and this the word 
" impression " does not convey. The active part is brought 
out better by ' observation " — the word used by Joseph 
Payne and James MacAlister ; but this seems hardly wide 
enough. Other writers of English borrow words straight from 
the French, .and talk about "intuition" and "intuitive," 
words which were taken (first I believe by Kant) from the 
Latin intueri, " to look at with attention and reflection." 

§ 94. I think we shall be wise in following these writers. 
On good authority I have heard of a German professor who 
when asked if he had read some large work recently pub- 
lished in the distressing type of his nation, replied that he 
had not ; he was waiting for a French translation. If the 
Germans find that the French express their thoughts more 
clearly than they can themselves, we may think ourselves 
fortunate when the French will act as interpreters. I there- 
fore gladly turn to M. Buisson and translate what he says 
about " intuition." 

" Intuition is just the most natural and most spon- 
taneous action of human intelligence, the action by which 
the mind seizes a reality without effort, hesitation, or 
go-between. It is a ' direct apperception,' made as it were 
at a glance. If it has to do with some matter within the 
province of the senses, the senses perceive it at once. Here 
we have the simplest case of all, the most common, the 



362 PESTALOZZI. 



Bulsson and Jullien on intuition. 

most easily noted. If the thing concerned is an idea, a 
reahty, that is, beyond the reach of the senses, we still say 
that we seize it by intuition when all that is necessary is that 
it present itself to the mind, and the mind at once grasps 
it and is satisfied with it without any need of proof or 
investigation. We advance by intuition whenever our mind, 
acting by the senses, or by the judgment, or by the con- 
science, knows things with the same amount of evidence and 
the same amount of speed that a distinct view of an object 
affords the eye. So intuition is no separate faculty ; it is 
nothing strange or new in the mind of man. It is just the 
mind itself ' intuitively ' recognising what exists in it or 
around it " {Les Conferences Fed. faites aux Instituteurs, 
Delagrave, 1879, p. 331). So the "intuitive method" (to 
keep the French name for it) is of very wide application. 
" It appeals to this force sui generis, to this glance of the 
mind, to this spontaneous spring of the intelligence towards 
truth." It sets the pupil's mind to work in following his 
own intellectual instincts. If in our teaching we can use it, 
we shall have gained, as M. Buisson says, the best helper in the 
world, viz., the pupil. If he can be got to take an active 
part in the instruction all diiificulty vanishes at once. Instead 
of having to drag him along, you will see him delighted to 
keep you company. 

§ 95. According to M. Buisson there are three kinds of 
intuition — sensuous, intellectual, and moral. Similarly M. 
Jullien {Esprit de Festalozzi, 1812, vol. j, p. 152) says that 
there are " intuitions " of the " internal senses " as well as 
of the external : the "internal senses" are four in number: 
first, the sense for the true ; second, the sense for the beauti- 
ful ; third, the sense for the good ; fourth, the sense for the 
infinite. 



PESTALOZZI. 363 



Pestalozzi and Locke. 



§ 96. Without settling whether this analysis is complete 
we shall have no difficulty in admitting that both body and 
mind have faculties by means of which we apprehend, lay 
hold of, what is true and right ; and it is on the use of these 
faculties that Pestalozzi bases instruction. No Englishman 
may have found a good word to indicate Anschauuns;, but one 
Englishman at least had the idea of it long before Pestalozzi. 
More than a century earlier Locke had called knowledge 
" the internal perception of the mind." " Knowing is see- 
ing," said he ; " and if it be so, it is madness to persuade 
ourselves we do so by another man's eyes, let him use never 
so many words to tell us that what he asserts is very 
visible " {Si/pra p. 222). 

§ 97. Thus in theory Pestalozzi was, however unconsci- 
ously, a follower of Locke. But in practice they went far 
asunder. Locke's thoughts were constantly occupied with 
philosophical investigations, and he seems to have made 
small account of the intellectual power of children, and to 
have supposed that they cannot " see " anything at all. So 
he cared little what was taught them, and till they reached 
the age of reason the tutor might give such lessons as 
would be useful to " young gentlemen," the avowed object 
being to " keep them from sauntering." His follower 
Rousseau preferred that the child's mind should not be 
filled with the traditional lore of the schoolroom, and that 
the instructor, when the youth reached the age of twelve, 
should find "an unfurnished apartment to let." Then came 
Pestalozzi, and he saw that at whatever age the instructor 
began to teach the child, he would not find an unfurnished 
apartment, seeing that every child learns continuously from 
the hour of its birth. And how does the child learn ? Not 
by repeating words which express the thoughts, feelings, and 



364 PESTALOZZI. 



Subjects for, and art of, teaching. 

experiences of other people,* but by his own experiences 
and feelings, and by the thoughts which these suggest to 
him. 

§ 98. Elementary education then on its intellectual side 
is teaching the child to think. The proper subjects of 
thought for children Pestalozzi held to be the children's 
surroundings, the realities of their own lives, the things that 
affect them and arouse their feelings and interests. Perhaps 
he did not emphasize interest as much as Herbart has done 
since ; but clearly an Anschauung or " intuition " is only 
possible when the child is interested in the thing observed. 

§ 99. The art of teaching in Pestalozzi's system consists 
in analyzing the knowledge that the children should acquire 
about their surroundings, arranging it in a regular sequence, 
and bringing it to the children's consciousness gradually and 
in the way in which their minds will act upon it. In this 
way they learn slowly, but all they learn is their own. 
They are not like the crow drest up in peacock's feathers, for 

• Did Pestalozzi make due allowance foi the system of thouj:;ht which 
every child inherits? Croom Robertson in "How we came by our 
Knowledge" {Nineteenth Century, No. I, March, 1877), without men 
tioning Pestalozzi, seems to differ from him. Croom Robertson says 
that " Children being born into the world are born into society, and are 
acted on by overpowering social influences before they have any chance 
of being their proper selves. . . . The words and sentences that 
fall upon a child's ear and are soon upon his lips, express not so much 
his subjective experience as the common experience of his kind, which 
becomes as it were an objective rule or measure to which his shall 
conform. . . . He does, he must, accept what he is told ; and in 
general he is only too glad to find his own experience in accordance 
with it. . . . We use our incidental, by which I mean our natural 
subjective experience, mainly to decipher and verify the ready-made 
scheme of knowledge that is given us en bloc with the words of our 
mother-tongue" (pp. 117, 118). 



PESTALOZZI. 365 



" Mastery." 



they have not appropriated any dead knowledge (" angelernte 
todte Begriffe" as Diesterweg has it), and it cannot be said 
of them, " They know about much, but kmna nothing {Sie 
kennen viel und wissen nichts)." Their knowledge is actual 
knowledge, for they are taught not what to think but to 
think, and to exercise their powers of observation and draw 
conclusions from their own experience. The teacher 
simply furnishes materials and occasions for this exercise 
in observing, and as it goes on gives his benevolent super- 
intendence. 

§ 100. They learn slowly for another reason. Accord- 
ing to Pestalozzi the first conceptions must be dwelt upon 
till they are distinct and firmly fixed. Buss tells us that 
when he first joined Pestalozzi at Burgdorf the delay over 
the prime elements seemed to him a waste of time, but 
that afterwards he was convinced of its being the right plan, 
and felt that the failure of his own education was due to its 
incoherent and desultory character. " Not only," says 
Pestalozzi, " have the first elements of knowledge in every 
subject the most important bearing on its complete outline, 
but the child's confidence and interest are gained by perfect 
attainment even in the lowest stage of instruction." * 



* One of the most interesting and most difficult problems in teaching 
is this : — How long should the beginner be kept to the rudiments ? 
With young children, to whom ideas" come fast, the main thing is no 
doubt to take care that these ideas become distinct and are made " the 
intellectual property " of the learners. But after a year or two 
chil Iren will be impatient to "get on," and if they seem "marking 
lime" will be bored and discouraged. Then again in some subjects 
the elementary parts seem clear only to those who have a conception of 
the whole. As Diderot says in a passage I have seen quoted from Le 
Neveti de Rameau, " II faut etre profond dans I'art ou dans la science 



366 PESTALOZZI. 



The body's part in education. 



§ loi. We have seen that Pestalozzi would ha\e 
children learn to pray, to think, and to work. In schools 
for the soi-disant " upper classes " the parents or friends of 
a boy sometimes say, "There is no need for him to woik 
he will be very well off." From this kind of demoralization 
Pestalozzi's pupils were free. They would have to work, 
and Pestalozzi wished them to learn to work as soon as pos- 
sible. In this way he sought to increase their self-respect, 
and to unite their school-life with their life beyond it.* 

§ I02. Pestalozzi was tremendously in earnest, and he 
wished the children also to take instruction seriously. He 
was totally opposed to the notion which had found favour 
with many great authorities as eg., Locke and Basedow, 
that instruction should always be given in the guise of 
amusement. " I am convinced," says he, " that such a 

pour en bien posseder les elements." " C'est le milieu et la fin qui 
eclaircissent les tenebres du commencement." The greatest "coach " 
in Cambridge used to " rush " his men through their subjects and 
then go back again for thorough learning. To be sure, the "scientific 
method " suitable for young men differs greatly from the " heuristic" or 
" method of investigation," which is best for children. (See Joseph 
Payne's Lecture on Pestalozzi.) But even with children we should bear 
in mind Niemeyer's caution, " Thoroughness itself may become super- 
ficial by exaggeration ; for it may keep too long to a part and in this 
way fail to complete and give any notion of the whole" (Quoted 
by O. Fischer, Wichtigste Pad. 213). 

* Nearly 20 years ago (1871) appeared a paper on "Elementary 
National Education " in which "John Parkin, M.D.," advocated making 
all our elemenfai-y achools industrial, not only for practical purposes, 
but still more for the sake of physical education. The paper attracted 
no notice at the time, but now we are beginning to see that the body is 
concerned in education as well as the mind, and that the mind learns 
through it " without book." The application of this truth will bring 
about many changes. 



PESTALOZZI. 367 



Learning must not be play. 



notion will for ever preclude solidity of knowledge, and, for 
want of sufificient exertions on the part of the pupils, will 
lead to that very result which I wish to avoid by my 
piinciple of a constant employment of the thinking powers. 
Actild must very early in life be taught the lesson that 
exertion is indispensable for the attainment of knowledge "* 
(To G., xxiv, p. 117). But he should be taught at the same 
time that exertion is not an evil, and he should be encouraged, 
not frightened, into it. Healthy exertion, whether of body 
or mind, is always attended with a feeling of satisfaction 
amounting to pleasure, and where this pleasure is absent the 
instructor has failed in producing proper exertion. As 
Pestalozzi says, "Whenever children are inattentive and 
apparently take no interest in a lesson, the teacher should 
always first look to himself for the reason "f {lb.). 

* Herbart, when he visited Pestalozzi at Burgdorf, observed that 
thougli Pestalozzi's ivindness was apparent to all, he took no pains in his 
teaching to mix the dulce with the utile. He never talked to the children, 
or joked, or gave them an anecdote. This, however, did not surprise 
Herbart, whose own experience had taught him that when the subject 
requires earnest attention the children do not like it the better for the 
teacher's "fun." "The feeling of clear apprehension," says he, "I 
held to be the only genuine condiment of instruction " (Herbart's Pdii. 
Schriften, ed. by O. Willmann, j. 89). 

t First look to himself, but there may be other causes of failure at' 
well. The great thing is never to put up contentedly, or even discon 
tentedly, with failure. In teaching classes of lads from ten to sixteen 
years old, when I have found the lessons in any subject were not going 
v.'dl, I have sometimes taken the class into my confidence, told them 
that they no doubt felt as I did that this lesson was a dull one, and 
asked them each to put on paper what he considered to be the reasons, 
and also to make any suggestions that occurred to him. In this way I 
have got some very good hints, and I have always been helped in my 
effort to understand how the work seemed to the pupils. Every teachej 



368 PESTALOZZI. 

Singing and drawing. 

§ 103. But though he took so serious a view of instruc- 
tion, he made instruction include and indeed give a promi- 
nent place to the arts of singing and drawing. In the 
Pestalozzian schools singing found immense favour with both 
the masters and the pupils, and the collection of songs by 
Nageli, a master at Yverdun, became famous. Drawing too 
was practised by all. As Pestalozzi writes to Greaves (xxiv, 
117), "A person who is in the habit of drawing, especially 
from nature, will easily perceive many circumstances which 
are commonly overlooked, and will form a much more correct 
impression even of such objects as he does not stop to 
examine minutely, than one who has never been taught to 
look upon what he sees with an intention of reproducing a 
likeness of it. The attention to the exact shape of the 
whole and the proportion of the parts, which is requisite for 
the taking of an adequate sketch, is converted into a habit, 
and becomes productive both of instruction and amuse- 
ment." 

§ 104. I have now endeavoured to point out the main 
features of Pestalozzianism. The following is the summing 
up of these features given by Morf in his Contribution to 
Pestalozzi's Biography : — 

I. Instruction must be based on the learner's own 
experience. (Das Fundament des Unterrichts ist 
die Anschauung.) 



should make this effort. As Pestalozzi says, "Could we conceive the 
indescribable tedium which must oppress the young mind while the 
weary hours are slowly passing away one after another in occupations 
which it can neither relish nor understand ... we should no 
longer be surprised at the remissness of the schoolboy creeping like 
snail unwillingly to school " (To G., xxx, 150). 



PESTALOZZI. 369 

Morf's summing-up. 

2. What the learner experiences and observes must be 

connected with language. 

3. The time for learning is not the time for judging, not 

the time for criticism. 

4. In every department instruction must begin with the 

simplest elements, and starting from these must 
be carried on step by step according to the develop- 
ment of the child, that is, it must be brought into 
psychological sequence. 
5 At each point the instructor shall not go forward till 
that part of the subject has become the proper 
intellectual possession of the learner. 

6. Instruction must follow the path of development, not 

the path of lecturing, teaching, or telHng. 

7. To the educator the individuality of the child must be 

sacred. 

8. Not the acquisition of knowledge or skill is the main 

object of elementary instruction, but the development 
and strengthening of the powers of the mind. 

9. With knowledge ( IVissen) must come power {Konnen), 

with information {Ketiniiiiss) skill {Fertigkeit). 

10. Intercourse between educator and pupil, and school 

discipline especially, must be based on and controlled 
by love. 

11. Instruction shall be subordinated to the aim of educa- 

tion. 

12. The ground of moral-religious bringing up lies in the 

relation of mother and child.* 

* With Morf s summing-up it is interesting to c )mpare Joseph Payne's, 
given at the end of his lecture on Pestalozzi : 

I. Tlie principles of education are not to be devised ai extra ; they 
are to be sought for in human nature, 
z 



370 PESTALOZZI. 



Joseph Payne's summing-up. 



§ 105. Having now seen in which direction Pestalozzi 
would start the school-coach, let us examine (with reference 

II. This nature is an organic nature — a plexus of bodily, iiiielleclual 
and moral capabilities, ready for development, and struggling to develop 
themselves. 

III. The education conducted by the formal educator has both a 
negative and a positive side. The negative function of the educator 
consists in removing impediments, so as to afford free scope for the 
learner's self-development. His positive function is to stimulate the 
learner to the exercise of his powers, to furnish materials and occasion 
for the exercise, and to superintend and maintain the action of the 
machinery. 

IV. Self-development begins with the impressions received by the 
mind from external objects. Tiiese impressions (called sensations), 
when the mind becomes conscious of them, group themselves into per- 
ceptions. These are registered in the mind as conceptions or ideas, and 
constitute that elementary knowledge which is the basis of all know- 
ledge. 

V. Spontaneity and self-activity are the necessary conditions under 
which the mind educates itself and gains power and independence, 

VI. Practical aptness or faculty, depends more on habits gained by 
the assiduous oft-repeated exercise of the learner's active powers than on 
knowledge alone. Knowing and doing ( IVissen und Kounen) must, 
however, proceed together. The chief aim of all education (including 
instruction) is the development of the learner's powers. 

VII. All education (including instruction) must be grounded on the 
learner's own observation {Ansc/iaicioig) at first hand — on his own 
personal experience. This is the true basis of all his knowledge. First 
the reality, then the symbol ; first the thing, then the word, not vice 
versd. 

VIII. That which the learner has gained by his own observation 
{Anschatiting) and which, as a part of his personal experience, is incor- 
porated with his mind, he kiioms and can describe or explain in his own 
words. His competency to do this is the measure of the accuracy of 
his observation, and consequently of his knowledge. 

iX. Personal experience necessitates the advancement of the learner's 
mind from the near and actual, with which he is in contact, and which 



PESTALOZZI. 37 T 

The "two nations." Mother's lessons. 

to England only) the direction in which it is travelling at 
present. 

§ 1 06. For educational purposes we may, with Lord 
Beaconsfield, regard the English as composed of two nations, 
the rich and the poor. Let us consider these separately. 

In the case of the rich we find that the worst part of our 
educational course — the part most wrong in theory and 
pernicious in practice — is the schooling of young children, 
say between six and twelve years old. Before the age of 
six some few are fortunate enough to attend a good Kinder- 
garten ; but the opportunity of doing this is at present rare, 
and for most children of well-to-do parents there is, up to 
six years old, little or no organised instruction. Pestalozzi 
would have every mother made capable of giving such 
instruction. Froebel would have every child sent to a 
skilled "Kindergartnerin." It seems tome beyond question 
that children gain immensely from joining a properly-managed 
Kindergarten ; but where this is impossible, perhaps the 
mother may leave the child to the series of impressions 
which come to its senses without any regular order. Ac- 
cording to the first Lord Lytton, the mother's interference 
might remind us of the man who thought his bees would 
make honey faster if, instead of going in search of flowers, 
they were shut up and had flowers brought to them. The way 

he can deal with himself, to the more remote ; therefore from the 
concrete to the abstract, from particulars to generals, from the known 
ti) the unknown. This is the method of elementaiy education ; the 
opposite proceeding — the usual proceeding of our traditional teaching — 
leads the mind from the abstract to the concrete, from generals to 
particulars, from the unknown to the known. This latter is the 
Scientific method — a method suited only to the advanced learner, who 
it assumes is already trained by the Elementary method. 



372 PESTALOZZI. 



Mistakes in teaching children. 



in which young children turn from object to object, like the 
bees from flower to flower, seems to show that at this stage 
their intellectual training goes on whether we help it or not. 
There is no doubt an education for children however young, 
and the mother is the teacher, but the lessons have more to 
do with the heart than the head. 

§ 107. But the time for regular teaching comes at last, 
and what is to be done then ? Let us consider briefly what 
is done. 

Hitherto, the only defence ever made of our school-course 
leading up to residence at a University, has been that it 
aims not at giving knowledge but at training the mind. 
Youths then are supposed to be engaged, not in gaining 
knowledge, but in training their faculties for adult life. But 
when we come to provide for the " education " of children, 
we never think of training their faculties for youth, but 
endeavour solely to inculcate what will then come in useful. 
We see clearly enough that it v/ould be absurd to cram the 
mind of a youth with laws of science or art or commerce 
which he could not understand, on the ground that the 
getiing-up of these things might save him trouble in after- 
life. But we do not hesitate to sacrifice childhood to the 
learning by heart of grammar rules, Latin declensions, 
historical dates, and the like, with no thought whatever of 
the child's faculties, but simply with a view of giving him 
knowledge (so-called) that will come in useful five or six 
years afterwards. We do not treat youths thus, probably 
because we have more sympathy with them, or at least 
understand them better. The intellectual life to which the 
senses and the imagination are subordinated in the man 
has already begun in the youth. In an inferior degree he 
can do what the man can do, and understand what the man 



PESTALOZZI. 373 



Children and their teachers. 



can understand. He has already some notion of reasoning, 
and abstraction, and generalisation. But with the child it 
is very different. His active faculties may be said almost 
to differ in kind from a man's. He has a feeling for the 
sensuous world which he will lose as he grows up. His 
strong imagination, under no control of the reason, is con- 
stantly at work building castles in the air, and investing the 
doll or the puppet-show with all the properties of the things 
they represent. His feelings and affections, easily excited, 
find an object to love or dislike in every person and thing 
he meets with. On the other hand, he has only vague 
notions of the abstract, and has no interest except in actual 
known persons, animals, a?nd things. 

§ io8. There is, then, between the child of eight or nine 
and the youth of fourteen or fifteen a greater difference than 
between the youth and the man of twenty ; and this de- 
mands a corresponding difference in their studies. And 
yet, as matters are carried on now, the child is too often 
kept to the drudgery of learning by rote mere collections 
of hard words, perhaps, too, in a foreign language : and 
absorbed in the present, he is not much comforted by the 
teacher's assurance that " some day " these things will come 
in useful. 

§ 109. How to educate the child is doubtless the most 
difficult problem of all, and it is generally allotted to those 
who are the least hkely to find a satisfactory solution. 

The earliest educator of the children of many rich parents 
is the nursemaid — a person not usually distinguished by 
either intellectual or moral excellence.* At an early age 

* Most parents do not seem to think with Jean Paul, " If we 
regard all life as an educational institution, a circumnavigator of the 
world is less influenced by all the nations he has seen than by his 
nurse." {Levana, quoted in Morley's Rousseau.) 



374 PESTALOZZI. 

"Preparatory" Schools. 

this educator is superseded by the Preparatory School. 
Taken as a body, the ladies who open " estabHshments for 
young gentlemen " cannot be said to hold enlarged views, 
or, indeed, any views whatever, on the subject of education. 
Their intention is not so much to cultivate the children's 
faculties as to make a livelihood, and to hear no complaints 
that pupils who have left them have been found deficient 
in the expected knowledge by the master of the next school. 
If anyone would investigate the sort of teaching which is 
considered adapted to the capacity of children at this stage, 
let him look into a standard work still in vogue (" Mang- 
nall's Questions "), from which the young of both sexes 
acquire a great quantity and variety of learning ; the whole 
of ancient and modern history and biography, together with 
the heathen mythology, the planetary system, and the names 
of all the constellations, lying very compactly in about 300 
pages.* 

Unfortunately, moreover, from the gentility of these 
ladies, their scholars' bodies are often treated in preparatory 
schools no less injuriously than their minds. It may be 
natural in a child to use his lungs and delight in noise, but 

* I will quote the first paragraph of this work which is still 
considered mental pabulum suited to the digestions of young ladies and 
children : — 

*' Name some of the most Ancient Kingdoms. — Chaldea, Babylonia, 
Assyria, China in Asia, and Egypt in Africa. Nimrod, the grandson 
ot Ham, is supposed to have founded the first of these B.C. 2221, as 
well as the famous cities of Babylon and Nineveh ; his kingdom being 
within the fertile plains of Chaldea, Chalonltis, and Assyria, was of 
small extent compared with the vast empires that afterwards arose 
from it, but included several large cities. In the district called 
Babylonia were the cities of Babylon, Barsita, Idicarra, and Vologsia," 
&c., &c 



PESTALOZZI. 375 

Young boys ill taught at school. 

this can hardly be considered genteel, so the tendency is, 
as far as possible, suppressed. It is found, too, that if 
children are allowed to run about they get dirty and spoil 
their clothes, and do not look like " young gentlemen," so 
they are made to take exercise in a much more genteel 
fashion, walking slowly two-and-two, with gloves on.* 

§ no. At nine or ten years old, boys are commonly put 
to a school taught by masters. Here they lose sight of 
their gloves, and learn the use of their limbs ; but their 
minds are not so fortunate as their bodies. The studies 
of the school have been arranged without any thought of 
their pecuUar needs. The youngest class is generally the 
largest, often much the largest, and it is handed over to 
the least competent and worst paid master on the staff of 
teachers. The reason is, that Uttle boys are found to learn 
the tasks imposed upon them very slowly. A youth or a 
man who came fresh to the Latin grammar would learn in 
a morning as much as the master, with great labour, can 
;^et into children in a week. It is thought, therefore, that 
the best teaching should be applied where it will have the 
most obvious results. If anyone were to say to the manager 

* I shall always feel gratitude and affection for the two old ladies 
(sisters) to whom I was entrusted over half a century ago. More 
truly Christian women I never met with. But of the science and art 
of education they were totally ignorant ; and moreover the premises 
they occupied were unfit for a school. As all the boys were under ten 
years old, it will seem strange, but is alas ! too true, that there were 
vices among them which are supposed to be unknown to children and 
which if discovered would have made the old ladies close their school. 
The want of subjects in which the children can take a healthy 
interest will in a great measure account for the spread of evil in such 
schools. On this point some mistresses and most parents are 
dangerously ignorant. 



376 PESTALOZZL 



English folk-schools not Pestalozzian. 

of a school, " The master who takes the lowest form teaches 
badly, and the children learn nothing" ; he would perhaps 
say, " Very likely ; but if I paid a much higher salary, and 
got a better man, they would learn but little." The only 
thing the school-manager thinks of is. How much do the 
little boys learn of what is taught in the higher forms ? 
How their faculties are being developed, or whether they 
have any faculties except for reading, writing, and arithmetic, 
and for getting grammar-rules, &c. by heart, he is not so 
" unpraccical " as to enquire. 

§ III. With reference to the education of the first of our 
"two nations," it seems then pretty clear that Pestalozzi 
would require that the school-coach should be turned and 
started in a totally different direction. 

§ 112. What about the education of the other "nation," 
a nation of which the verb "to rule " has for many centuries 
been used in the passive voice, but can be used in that 
voice no longer? A century ago, with the partial exception 
of Scotland and Massachusetts, there was no such thing as 
school education for the people to be found anywhere in 
Europe or America. But from 1789 onwards power has 
been passing more and more from the few to the many ; 
and as a natural consequence folk-schools (for which we 
have not yet found a name) have become of vast importance 
everywhere. The Germans, as we have seen, have been 
the disciples of Pestalozzi, and their elementary education 
in everything bears traces of his ideas. The English have 
organised a great system of elementary education in total 
ignorance of Pestalozzi. As usual, we seem to have sup- 
posed that the right system would come to us "in sleep." 
But has it come ? The children of the poor are now com- 
pelled by the law to attend an elementary school. What 



PESTALOZZI 377 



Schools judged by results. 



sort of an education has the law there provided for them ? 
The Education Department professes to measure everything 
by results. Let us do the same. Suppose that on his 
leaving school we wished to forecast a lad's future. What 
should we try to find out about him ? No doubt we should 
ask what he knew ; but this would not be by any means 
the main thing. His skill would interest us, and still more 
would his state of health. But what we should ask first 
and foremost is this, Whom does he love ? Whom does 
he admire and imitate ? What does he care about ? What 
interests him ? It is only when the answers to these ques- 
tions are satisfactory, that we can think hopefully of his 
future ; and it is only in so far as the school-course has 
tended to make the answers satisfactory, that it deserves 
our approval. Schools such as Pestalozzi designed would 
have thus deserved our approval ; but we cannot say this 
of the schools into which the children of the English poor 
are now driven. In these schools the heart and the affec- 
tions are not thought of, the powers of neither mind nor 
body are developed by exercise, and the children do not 
acquire any interests that will raise or benefit them. 

§ 113. An advocate of our system would not deny this, 
but would probably say, " The question for us to consider 
is, not what is the best that in the most favourable circum- 
stances might be attempted, but what is the best that in 
very restricted and by no means favourable circumstances, 
we are likely to get. The teachers in our schools are not 
self-devoting Pestalozzis, but only ordinary men and women, 
and still worse, ordinary boys and girls.* It would be of 

* Having watched the "teaching" of pupil-teachers, I find " hat 
some of them (I may say many) never address more than one child at 
a ume, and never attempt to gain the attention of more than a single 



378 PESTALOZZI. 



Pupil-teachers. Teaching not educating. 

no use talking to our teachers (still less our pupil-teachers) 
about developing the affections and the mental or bodily 
powers of the children. All such talk could end in nothing 
but silly cant. As for character, we expect the school to 
cultivate in the children habits of order, neatness, industry. 
Beyond this we cannot go." 

And yet, though this seems reasonable, we feel that it is 
not quite satisfactory. If so much depends in all of us on 
" admiration, hope, and love," we can hardly consider a 
system of education that entirely ignores them to be well 

child. So, by a very simple calculation, we can get at the maximum 
time each child is "under instruction." If the pupil-teacher has but 
three-quarters of the pupils for whom the Department supposes him 
"sufficient," each child cannot be under instruction more than two 
minutes in the hour. The rest of the time the children must sit 
quiet, or be cuffed if they do not. What is called "simultaneous" 
teaching in, say, reading, consists in the pupil-teacher reading from the 
book, and as he pronounces each word, the children shout it after him ; 
but no one except the pupil-teacher knows the place in the book. 

But perhaps the dangers from employing boys and girls to teach and 
govern children are greater morally than intellectually. Whether he 
report on it or not, the Inspector has less influence on the moral 
training than the youngest pupil-teacher. Channing has well said : 
" A child compelled for six hours each day to see the countenance and 
hear the voice of an unfeeling, petulant, passionate, unjust teacher is 
placed in a school of vice." Those who have never taught day after 
day, week after week, month after month, little know what demands 
school-work makes on the temper and the sense of justice. The 
harshest tyrants are usually those who are raised but a little way 
above those whom they have to control ; and when I think of the 
pupil-teacher with his forty pupils to keep in order, I heartily pity both 
him and them. Is there not too much reason to fear lest in many 
cases the school should prove for both what Channing has well 
described as " a school of vice"? (R. H. Q. in Spectator, 1st March, 
1890.) 



PESTALOZZI. 379 

Lowe or Pestaiozzi? 

idapted to the needs of human nature. If Pestaiozzi was 
right, we must be wrong. We have never supposed the 
object of the school to be the development of the faculties 
of heart, of head, and of hand, but we have thought o{ 
aothing but learning — learning first of all to read, write, 
and cipher, and then in "good" schools, one or more 
"extra subjects "may be taken up, and a grant obtained 
for them. The sole object, both of managers and teachers, 
is to prepare for the Inspector, who comes once a year, and 
from an examination of five hours or so, pronounces on 
what the children have learnt. 

§ 114. The engineer most concerned in the construction 
of this machine, the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, announced 
that there could be "no such thing as a science of educa- 
tion ;" and as when we have no opinion of our own we always 
adopt the opinion of some positive person, we took his word 
for it. But what if the confident Mr. Lowe was mistaken ? 
What if there is such a science, and the aim of it is that 
children should grow up not so much to know something as 
to de something ? In this case we shall be obliged sooner 
or later to give up Mr. Lowe and to come round to 
Pestaiozzi.* Science is correct inferences drawn from the 
facts of the universe; and where such science exists, confident 
assertions that it does not and cannot exist are dangerous 
for the confident persons and for those who follow them. Even 

* Since the above was written, another "New Code" has appeared 
(March, 1890), in which the system of measuring by "passes," a 
system maintained (in spite of the remonstrances of all interested in 
education) for nearly 30 years, is at length abandoned. We are 
certainly travelling, however slowly, away from Mr. Lowe. Far as we 
are still from Pestaiozzi there seems reason to hope that the distance ia 
diminishing. 



38o PESTALOZZI. 

Chief force, personality of the teacher. 

if " there is no such thing as a science of education," such 
a thing as education there is ; and this is just what Mr. Lowe, 
and we may say the English, practically deny. They make 
arrangements for instruction and mete out " the grant " 
according to the results obtained, but they totally fail to 
conceive of the existence of education^ education which has 
instruction among its various agents. 

§ 115. In one respect the analogy between the educator 
and child and the gardener and plant, an analogy in which 
Pestalozzi no less than Froebel delighted, entirely breaks 
down. The gardener has to study the conditions necessary 
for the health and development of the plant, but these 
conditions lie outside his own life and are independent of it. 
With the educator it is different. Like the gardener he can 
create nothing in the child, but unlike the gardener he can 
further the development only of that which exists in himself. 
He draws out in the young the intelligence and the sense of 
what is just, the love of what is beautiful, theadmirationof what 
is noble, but this he can do only by his own intelligence and 
his own enthusiasm for what is just and beautiful and noble. 
Even industry is in many cases caught from the teacher. In a 
volume of essays (originally published m\hQ.Forutn\ in which 
some men, distinguished as scholars or in literature in the 
United States, have given an account of their early years, we 
find that almost in every case they date their intellectual indus- 
try and growth from the time when they came under the in- 
fluence of some inspiring teacher. Thus even for instruction 
and still more for education, the great force is the teacher. 
This is a truth which all our " parties " overlook. They 
wage their controversies and have their triumphs and defeats 
about unessentials, and leave the essentials to "crotchety 
educationists." In such questions as whether the Church 



PESTALOZZI. 381 

English care for unessentials. 

Catechism shall or shall not be taught, whether natural 
science shall or shall not figure in the time-table (without 
scientific teachers it can figure nowhere else), whether the 
parents or the Government shall pay for each child twopence 
or threepence a week, whether the ratepayers shall or shall 
not be " represented " among the Managers in " voluntary " 
schools, in all questions of this kind education is not con- 
cerned ; and yet these are the only questions that we think 
about. In the end it will perhaps dawn upon us that in 
every school what is important for education is not the time- 
table but the teacher, and that so far as pupil-teachers are 
employed education is impossible. Elsewhere (infra p. 476) 
I have told of a man in the prime of life (he seemed between 
40 and 50 years old) whose time was entirely taken up in 
teaching a large class of children, boys and girls, of six or 
seven years. He most certainly could and did educate them 
both in heart and mind. He made their lessons a delightful 
occupation to them, and he exercised over them the influence 
of a good and wise father. Here was the right system seen 
at its best. I do not say that all or even most adult teachers 
would have exercised so good an influence as this gentleman ; 
but so far as they come up to what they ought to be and 
might be they do exercise such an influence. And this of 
course can be said of no //////-teacher. 

§ 116. As regards schools then, schools for the rich and 
schools for the poor, the great educating force is the per- 
sonality of the teacher. Before we can have Pestalozzian 
schools we must have Pestalozzian teachers. Teachers 
must catch something of Pestalozzi's spirit and enter into 
his conception of their task. Perhaps some of them will 
feel inchned to say : " Fine words, no doubt, and in a sense 
very true, that education should be the unfolding of the 



382 PESTALOZZI. 



Aim at the ideal. 



faculties according to the Divine idea ; but between this 
high poetical theory and the dull prose of actual school- 
teaching, there is a great gulf fixed, and we cannot attend 
to both at the same time." I know full well the difference 
there is between theories and plans of education as they 
seem to us when we are at leisure and can think of them 
without reference to particular pupils, and when all our 
energy is taxed to get through our day's teaching, and our 
animal spirits jaded by having to keep order and exact 
attention among veritable schoolboys who do not answer 
in all respects to " the young " of the theorists. But whilst 
admitting most heartily the difference here, as elsewhere, 
between the actual and the ideal, I think that the dull 
prose of school-teaching would be less dull and less prosaic 
if our aim was higher, and if we did not contentedly assume 
that our present performances are as good as the nature of 
the case will admit of. Many teachers (perhaps I may say 
most) are discontented with the greater numberof their pupils, 
but it is not so usual for teachers to be discontented with 
themselves. And yet even those who are most averse from 
theoretical views, which they call unpractical, would admit, 
as practical men, that their methods are probably suscep- 
tible of improvement, and that even if their methods are 
right, they themselves are by no means perfect teachers. 
Only let the desire of improvement once exist, and the 
teacher will find a new interest in his work. In part, the 
treadmill-like monotony so wearing to the spirits will be 
done away, and he will at times have the encouragement of 
conscious progress. To a man thus minded, theorists may 
be of great assistance. His practical knowledge may, in- 
deed, often show him the absurdity of some pompously 
enunciated principle, and even where the principles seera 



PESTALOZZI. 383 

Use of theorists. Books. 

sound, he may smile at the applications. But the theorists 
will show him many aspects of his profession, and will lead 
him to make many observations in it, which would other- 
wise have escaped him. They will save him from a danger 
caused by the difficulty of getting anything done in the 
school-room, the danger of thinking more of means than 
ends. They will teach him to examine what his aim really 
is, and then whether he is using the most suitable methods 
to accomplish it. 

Such a theorist is Pestalozzi. He points to a high ideal, 
and bids us m.easure our modes of education by it. Let us 
not forget that if we are practical men we are Christians, 
and as such the ideal set before us is the highest of all. 
" Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." 



The Pestalozzian literature in German and even in French is now 
considerable, but it is still small in English. The book I have made 
most use of is Histoire de Pestalozzi par R, de Guimps (Lausanne, 
Bridel), with its translation by John Russell (London : Sonnen- 
schein. Appleton's : N. Yk.). In Henry Barnard's Pestalozzi and 
Pestalozzianism are collected some good papers, among them Tilleard's 
trans, from Raumer. We also have H. Kruesi's Pestalozzi (Cinci- 
natti : Wilson, Hinkle, & Co.). I have already mentioned Miss 
Channing's Leonard and Gertrtcde. The Letters to Greaves are now 
out of print. A complete account of Pestalozzi and everything 
connected with him, bibliography included, is given in M. J. 
Guillaume's article Pestalozzi, in Buisson's Dictionnaire de Pedagogies 
(See also Pestalozzi par J. Guillaume (Hachette) just published.) 



/ 



XVII. 

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. 



(1783-1852.) 



§1.1 NOW approach the most difficult part of my subject. 
I have endeavoured to give some account of the lessons 
taught us by the chief Educational Reformers, No doubt 
my selection of these has been made in a fashion somewhat 
arbitrary, and there are names wliich do not appear and 
yet might reasonably be looked for if all the chief Educa- 
tional Reformers were supposed to be included. But the 
plan of my book has restricted me to a few, and I am by 
no means sure that some to whom I have given a chapter are 
as worthy of it as some to whom I have not. I have 
in a measure been guided by fancy and even by chance. 
One man, however, I dare not leave out. All the best 
tendencies of modern thought on education seem to me to 
culminate in what was said and done by Friedrich Froebel, 
and I have little doubt that he has shown the right road 
foi further advance. Of what he said and did I therefore 
feel bound to give the best account I can, but I am well 
aware that I shall fail, even more conspicuously than in 
other cases, to do him justice. There are some .great men 
who seem to have access to a world from which we ordinary 
mortals are shut out. Like Moses " they go up into the 



FROEBEL. 385 

Difficulty in understanding F. 

Mount," and the directions they give us are based upon 
what they have seen in it. But we cannot go up with 
them ; so we feel that we very imperfectly understand them ; 
and when there can be not the smallest doubt of their 
sincerity we at times hesitate about the nature of their 
visions. For myself I must admit that I very imperfectly 
understand Froebel. I am convinced, as I said, that he has 
pointed out the right road for our advance in education ; 
but he was perhaps right in saying : " Centuries may yet 
pass before my view of the human creature as manifested in 
the child, and of the educational treatment it requires, are 
universally received," It has already taken centuries to 
recover from the mistakes made at the Renascence. For 
the full attainment of Froebel's standpoint perhaps a few 
additional centuries may be necessary. 

§ 2. Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel* was born at 
Oberweissbach, a village of the Thuringian Forest, on the 
2ist April, 1783. He completed his seventieth year, and 
died at Marienthal, near Bad-Liebenstein, on the 21st June, 
1852. Like Comenius, with whom he had much in 
common, he was neglected in his youth; and the remem- 
brance of his own early sufferings made him in after life 
the more eager in promoting the happiness of children. 
His mother he lost in his infancy, and his father, the pastor 
of Oberweissbach and the surrounding district, attended to 
his parish but not to his family. Friedrich soon had a 
stepmother, and neglect was succeeded by stepmotherly 
attention ; but a maternal uncle took pity on him, and for 

* This short sketch of Froebel's life is mainly taken, with Messrs. 
Black's permission, from the Encyclopedia Britaunica, for which I 
wrote it. 



386 FROEBEL. 

A lad's quest of unity. 

some years gave him a home a few miles off at Stadt-Ilm. 
Here he went to the village school, but like many thoughtful 
boys he passed for a dunce. Throughout life he was 
always seeking for. hidden connexions and an underlying 
unity in all things. In his own words : " Man, particularly 
in boyhood, should become intimate with nature — not so 
much with reference to the details and the outer forms of 
her phenomena as with reference to the Spirit of God that 
lives in her and rules over her. Indeed, the boy feels this 
deeply and demands it " {Ed. of M., Hailmann's trans., p. 
162). But nothing of this unity was to be perceived in the 
piecemeal studies of the school ; so Froebel's mind, busy as 
it was for itself, would not work for the masters. His half- 
brother was therefore thought more worthy of a university 
education, and Friedrich was apprenticed for two years to a 
forester (i 797-1 799). Left to himself in the Thuringian 
Forest, Froebel now began to "become intimate with 
nature ;" and without scientific instruction he obtained a 
profound insight into the uniformity and essential unity of 
nature's laws. Years afterwards the celebrated Jahn (the 
"Father Jahn" of the German gymnasts) told a Berlin 
student of a queer fellow he had met, who made out all 
sorts of wonderful things from stones and cobwebs. This 
" queer fellow " was Froebel ; and the habit of making out 
general truths from the observation of nature, especially of 
plants and trees, dated from his solitary rambles in the 
Forest. No training could have been better suited to 
strengthen his inborn tendency to mysticism ; and when he 
left the Forest at the early age of seventeen, he seems to 
have been possessed by the main ideas which influenced 
him all his life. The conception which in him dominated 
all others was the tuiify of nature ; and he longed to study 



FROEBEL. 387 



F. wandering without rest. 



natural sciences that he might find in them various applica- 
tions of nature's universal laws. With great difficulty he 
got leave to join his elder brother at the university of Jena ; 
and there for a year he went from lecture-room to lecture- 
room hoping to grasp that connexion of the sciences which 
had for him far more attraction than any particular science 
in itself. But Froebel's allowance of money was very small, 
and his skill in the managemect of money was never great ; 
so his university career ended in an imprisonment of nine 
weeks for a debt of thirty shillings. He then returned 
home with very poor prospects, but much more intent on 
what he calls the course of " self-completion " ( Vervoll- 
kommnung meines selbst) than on " getting on " in a worldly 
point of view. He was soon sent to learn farming, but was 
recalled in consequence of the failing health of his father. 
In 1802 the father died, and Froebel, now twenty years old, 
had to shift for himself It was some time before he found 
his true vocation, and for the next three-and-a half years we 
find him at work now in one part of Germany now in 
another, — sometimes land-surveying, sometimes acting as 
accountant, sometimes as private secretary. 

§ 3. But in all this his " outer life was far removed from 
his inner life." " I carried my own world within me," he 
tells us, "and this it was for which I cared and which I 
cherished." In spite of his outward circumstances he 
became more and more conscious that a great task lay 
before him for the good of humanity ; and this conscious- 
ness proved fatal to his " settling down." " To thee may 
.Fate soon give a settled hearth and a loving wife " (thus he 
wrote in a friend's album in 1805); "me let it keep 
wandering without rest, and allow only time to learn aright 
my true relation to the world and to my own inner being. 



388 FROEBEL. 



Finds his vocation. With Pestalozzi. 

Do thou give bread to men ; be it my effort to give men to 
themselves " (K. Schmidt's Gesch. d. Piid., 3rd ed. by 
Lange, vol. iv, p. 277). 

§ 4. As yet the nature of the task was not clear to him, 
and it seemed determined by accident. While studying 
architecture in Frankfort-on-the-Main, he became acquainted 
with the director of a model school who had caught some 
of the enthusiasm of Pestalozzi. This friend saw that 
Froebel's true field was education, and he persuaded him to 
give up architecture and take a post in the model school. 
" The very first time," he says, " that I found myself before 
thirty or forty boys, I felt thoroughly at home. In fact, I 
perceived that I had at last found my long-missed life- 
element; and I wrote to my brother that I was as well 
pleased as the fish in the water : I was inexpressibly 
happy." 

§ 5. In this school Froebel worked for two years with 
remarkable success ; but he felt more and more his need of 
preparation, so he then retired and undertook the education 
of three lads of one family. Even in this he could not 
satisfy himself, and he obtained the parents' consent to his 
taking the boys to Yverdun, and there forming with them a 
part of the celebrated institution of Pestalozzi. Thus from 
1807 till 1809 Froebel was drinking in Pestalozzianism at 
the fountain head, and qualifying himself to carry on the 
work which Pestalozzi had begun. For the science of 
education had to deduce from Pestalozzi's experience 
principles which Pestalozzi himself could not deduce; 
and "Froebel, the pupil of Pestalozzi, ^nd a genius hkt; 
his master, completed the reformer's system ; taking the 
results at which Pestalozzi had arrived through the neces- 
sities of his position, Froebel developed the ideas involved 



FROEBEL. 389 



Froebel at the Universities. 



in them, not by further experience but by deduction from 
the nature of man, and thus he attained to the conception 
of true human development and to the requirements of true 
education " (Schmidt's Gesch. d. Pad.). 

§ 6. Holding that man and nature, inasmuch as they 
proceed from the same So\irce, must be governed by the 
same laws, Froebel longed for more knowledge of natural 
science. Even Pestalozzi seemed to him not to " honour 
science in her divinity." He therefore determined to 
continue the university course which had been so rudely 
interrupted eleven years before, and in 181 1 he began 
studying at Gottingen, whence he proceeded to Berlin. In 
his Autobiography he tells us : " The lectures for which I 
had so longed really came up to the needs of my mind and 
soul, and made me feel more fervently than ever the 
certainty of the demonstrable inner connexion of the whole 
cosmical development of the universe. I saw also the 
possibihty of man's becoming conscious of this absolute 
unity of the universe, as well as of the diversity of things 
and appearances which is perpetually unfolding itself within 
that unity ; and then when I had made clear to myself, and 
brought fully home to my consciousness the view that the 
infinitely varied phenomena in man's life, work, thought, 
feeling, and position were all summed up in the unity of 
his personal existence I felt myself able to turn my thoughts 
once more to educational problems " {Autob. trans, by 
Michaelis and Moore, p. 89). 

But again his studies were interrupted, this time by the 
king of Prussia's celebrated call " To my people." Though 
not a Prussian, Froebel was heart and soul a German. He 
therefore responded to the call, enlisted in Liitzow's corps, 
and went through the campaign of 181 3. His military 



390 FROEBEL. 

Thro' the Freiheits-krieg. Mineralogy. 

ardour, however, did not take his mind off education. 
" Everywhere," he writes, " as far as the fatigues I under- 
went allowed, I carried in my thoughts my future calling as 
educator ; yes, even in the few engagements in which 1 had 
to take part. Even in these I could gather experience for 
the task I proposed to myself." Froebel's soldiering showed 
him the value of discipline and united action, how the 
individual belongs not to himself but to the whole body, 
and how the whole body supports the individual. 

Froebel was rewarded for his patriotism by the friendship 
of two men whose names will always be associated with his, 
Langethal and Middendorff, These young men, ten years 
younger than Froebel, became attached to him in the field, 
and were ever afterwards his devoted followers, sacrificing 
all their prospects in life for the sake of carrying out his 
ideas. 

§ 7. At the peace of Fontainebleau (signed in May, 
1 8 14) Froebel returned to Berlin, and became curator of 
the Museum of Mineralogy under Professor Weiss. In 
accepting this appointment from the Government he seemed 
to turn aside from his work as educator ; but if not teaching 
he was learning. The unity of nature and human nature 
seemed more and more to reveal itself to him. Of the 
days past in the museum he afterwards wrote : " Here was 
I at the central point of my life and strife, where inner 
working and law, where life, nature, and mathematics were 
united in the fixed crystaline form, where a world of 
symbols lay open to the inner eye." Agam he says r "The 
stones in my hand and under my eye became speaking 
forms. The world of crystals declared to me the life and 
laws of life of man, and in still but real and sensible speech 
taught the true life of humanity." " Geology and crystal- 



FROEBEL. 391 



The " New Education " started. 



lography not only opened for me a higher circle of knowledge 
and insight, but also showed me a higher goal for my 
inquiry, my speculation, and my endeavour. Nature and 
man now seemed to me mutually to explain each other 
through all their numberless various stages of development. 
Man, as I saw, receives from a knowledge of natural 
objects, even because of their immense deep-seated 
diversity, a foundation for and a guidance towards a know- 
ledge of himself and life, and a preparation for the 
manifestation of that knowledge" (Autod. ui su^ra, p. 97). 
More and more the thought possessed him that the one 
thing needful for man was unity of development, perfect 
evolution in accordance with the laws of his being, such 
evolution as science discovers in the other organisms of 
nature. 

§ 8. He at first intended to become a teacher of natural 
science, but before long wider views dawned upon him. 
Langethal and Middendorff were in Berlin, engaged in 
tuition. Froebel gave them regular instruction in his 
theory, and at length, counting on their support, he 
resolved to set about realising his own idea of " the new 
education." This was in 18 16. Three years before one 
of his brothers, a clergyman, had died of fever caught from 
the French prisoners. His widow was still living in the 
parsonage at Griesheim, a village on the Ilm. Froebel 
gave up his post in Berlin, and set out for Griesheim on 
foot, spending his very last groschen on the way for bread. 
Here he undertook the education of his orphan niece and 
nephews, and also of two more nephews sent him by 
another brother. With these he opened a school, and 
wrote to Middendorff and Langethal to come and help in 
the experiment. Middendorif came at once, Langethal a 



392 FROEBEL. 

At Keilhau. ** Education of Man " published. 

year or two later, when the school had been moved to 
Keilhau, another of the Thuringian villages, which became 
the Mecca of the new faith. In Keilhau, Froebel, 
Langethal, Middendorff, and Barop, a relation of Midden- 
dorffs, all married and formed an educational community. 
Such zeal could not be fruitless, and the school gradually 
increased, though for many years its teachers, with Froebel 
at their head, were in the greatest straits for money, and at 
times even for food. Karl Froebel, who was brought up in 
the school, tells how, on one occasion, he and the other 
children were sent to ramble in the woods till some of the 
seed-corn provided for the coming year had been turned 
into bread for them. Besides these difficulties the com- 
munity suffered from the panic and reaction after the 
murder of Kotzebue (1819), and were persecuted as a nest 
of demagogues. But " the New Education " was sufficiently 
successful to attract notice from all quarters ; and when he 
had been ten years at Keilhau (1826) Froebel published his 
great work, The Education of Man. 

§ 9. Four years later he determined to start other institu- 
tions in connexion with the parent institution at Keilhau ; 
and being offered by a private friend the use of a castle on 
the Wartensee, in the canton of Lucerne, he left Keilhau 
under the direction of Barop, and with Langethal made a 
settlement in Switzerland. The ground, however, was very 
ill chosen. The Catholic clergy resisted what they con- 
sidered as a Protestant invasion, and the experiment on the 
Wartensee and at Willisau in the same canton, to which the 
institution was moved in 1833, never had a fair chance. It 
was in vain that Middendorff at Froebel's call left his wife 
and family at Keilhau, and laboured for four years in 
Switzerland without once seeing them. The Swiss institution 



FROEBEL. 393 



Froebel fails in Switzerland. 



never flourished. But the Swiss Government wished to 
turn to account the presence of the great educator; so 
young teachers were sent to Froebel for instruction, and 
finally he removed to Burgdorf (a town already famous from 
Pestalozzi's labours there thirty years earlier) to undertake 
the establishment of a public orphanage, and also to 
superintend a course of teaching for schoolmasters. The 
elementary teachers of the canton were to spend three 
months every alternate year at Burgdorf, and there compare 
experiences, and learn of distinguished men such as Froebel 
and Bitzius. 

§ ID. In his conferences with these teachers Froebel 
found that the schools suffered from the state of the raw 
material brought into them. Till the school age was 
reached the children were entirely neglected. Froebel's 
conception of harmonious development naturally led him 
to attach much importance to the earliest years, and his 
great work on The Education of Man, published as early as 
1826, deals chiefly with the education of children. At 
Burgdorf his thoughts were much occupied with the proper 
treatment of young children, and in scheming for them a 
graduated course of exercises modelled on the games in 
which he observed them to be most interested. In his 
eagerness to carry out his new plans he grew impatient of 
official restraints ; and partly from this reason, partly on 
account of his wife's ill health, he left Burgdorf without 
even actually becoming " Waisenvater " (father of the 
orphans).* After a sojourn of some months in Berlin, 
where he was detained through family affairs, but used the 

• This office was first filled by Langethal and afterwards by FerdU 
nand Froebel. I learned this at Burgdorf from Herr Pfarrer Heuer, 
whose father had himself been Waisenvater. 



394 FROEBEL. 

The first Kindergarten. 

opportunities thus afforded of examining the recently 
founded infant schools, Froebel returned to Keilhau, and 
soon afterwards opened the first Kindergarten^ or " Garden 
of Children," in the neighbouring village of Blankenhurg 
(a.d. 1837). Not only the thing but the name seemed to 
Froebel a happy inspiration, and it has now become 
inseparably connected with his own. Perhaps we can 
hardly understand the pleasure he took in it unless we 
know its predecessor, Kleinkinderbesch'dftigicngsanstalt, 

§11. Firmly convinced of the importance of the Kinder- 
garten for the whole human race, Froebel described his 
system in a weekly paper (his Sonntagsblatt) which appeared 
from the middle of 1837 till 1840. He also lectured in 
great towns ; and he gave a regular course of instruction to 
young teachers at Blankenburg. 

§ 12. But although the principles of the Kindergarten 
Ivere gradually making their way, the first Kindergarten was 
failing for want of funds. It had to be given up; and 
Froebel, now a widower (he had lost his wife in 1839), 
carried on his course for teachers first at Keilhau, and from 
1848, for the last four years of his life, at or near Liebenstein, 
in the Thuringian Forest, and in the duchy of Meiningen. 
It is in these last years that the man Froebel will be best 
known to posterity ; for in 1 849 he attracted within the 
circle of his influence a woman of great intellectual power, 
the Baroness von Marenholtz-Biilow, who has given us in 
hei Recollections of Friedrich Froebel tht only life-like portrait 
we possess. In these records of personal intercourse we 
see the truth of Deinhardt's words : " The living perception 
of universal and ideal truth which his talk revealed to us, 
his unbounded enthusiasm for the education and happiness 
of the human race, his willingness to offer up everything he 



FROEBEL. 395 

F.'s last years. Prussian edict against him. 

possessed for the sake of his idea, the stream of thoughts 
which flowed from his enthusiasm for the ideal as from an 
inexhaustible fountain, all these made Froebel a wonderful 
appearance in the world, by whom no unprejudiced spectator 
could fail to be attracted and elevated." 

§ 13. These seemed likely to be Froebel's most peaceful 
days. He married again ; and having now devoted himself 
to the training of women as educators, he spent his time in 
instructing his class of young female teachers. But trouble 
came upon him from a quarter whence he least expected it. 
In the great year of revolutions, 1848, Froebel had hoped to 
turn to account the general eagerness for improvement, and 
Middendorff had presented an address on Kindergartens to 
the German Parliament. Besides this a nephew of Froebel's 
published books which were supposed to teach socialism. 
True the uncle and nephew differed so widely that " the 
New Froebelians " were the enemies of the "Old." But 
the distinction was overlooked, and Friedrich and Karl 
Froebel were regarded as the united advocates of " some 
new thing." In the reaction which soon set in, Froebel 
found himself suspected of socialism and irreligion ; and in 
1851 the Cultus-7fiinister 'R.a.umex issued an edict forbidding 
the establishment of schools " after Friedrich and Karl 
Froebel's principles " in Prussia. It was in vain that 
Froebel proved that his principles differed fundamentally 
from his nephew's. It was in vain that a congress of 
schoolmasters, presided over by the celebrated Diesterweg, 
protested against the calumnious decree. The Minister 
tuined a deaf ear, and the decree remained in force ten 
years after the death of Froebel {i.e., till 1862). But the 
edict was a heavy blow to the old man, who looked to the 
Government of the " Cultus-staat " Prussia for support, and 



390 FROEBEL. 



His end. Attitude towards Reformers. 

was met with denunciation. Of the justice of the charge 
brought by the Minister ag&inst Froebel the reader may 
judge from the account of his principles given below. 

Whether from the worry of this new controversy, or from 
whatever cause, Froebel did not long survive the decree. 
His seventieth birthday was celebrated with great rejoicings 
in May, 1852, but he died in the following month, and 
lies buried at Schweina, a village near his last abode, 
Marienthal. 

§ 14. Throughout these essays my object has been to 
collect what seemed to me the most valuable lessons of 
various Reformers. In doing this I have had to judge and 
decide what was most valuable, and at times to criticise and 
differ from my authorities. This may perhaps give rise to 
the question. Do you then think yourself the superior or 
at least the equal of the great men you criticise ? and I 
could only reply in all sincerity, I most certainly do not. 
If I am asked further, what then is my attitude towards 
them ? I reply, it differs very much with different indi- 
viduals. I cannot say I am prepared to sit at the feet of 
Mulcaster, or Dury, or Petty. In writing of these men I 
simply point out very early expression of ideas that following 
generations have developed partially and we are developing 
still. When we come to the great leaders we see among 
them men like Comenius who unite a thorough study of 
what has already been thought and done with a genius for 
original thinking, men like Locke with splendid intellectual 
gifts and a power of happy and clear expression, men like 
Rousseau with a talent for shaking themselves free from 
"custom" — custom which "lies upon us with a weight, 
Heavy as frost and deep almost as life," and besides this 
(in his case at least) endowed with a voice to be heard 



FROEBEL. 397 



Difficulties with Froebel. 



throughout the world. Then again we have men like 
Pestalozzi who with a genius for investigating, devote theii 
lives to the investigation, and men like Froebel who seem 
to penetrate to a region above us or at least beyond us, and 
to talk about it in language which at times only partially 
conveys a meaning. From all these men we have much to 
learn ; and that we may do this we must come as learners 
to them. When we thus come we find that the great lessons 
they teach become clearer and clearer as each takes up 
wholly or in part what has been taught by his predecessors 
and adds to it. Some of these lessons we may now receive 
as established truths and seek to conform our practice to 
them. But in following our leaders we dare not close our 
eyes. Before we can know anything we must see it, as 
Locke says, with our mind's eye. The great thing is to 
keep the eye of the mind wide open and always on the look- 
out for truth. Acting on this conviction I have not blindly 
accepted the dicta even of the greatest men but have selected 
those of their lessons which are taught if not by all at least 
by most of them, and which also seem to evoke " the spon- 
taneous spring of the intelligence towards truth " (see p. 362, 
supra). 

§ 15. In reading Froebel however I am conscious that 
this " spring " is wanting. Before one can accept teaching 
one must at least understand it, and this preliminary is not 
always possible when we would learn from Froebel. At 
times he goes entirely out of sight, and whether the words 
we hear are the expression of deep truth or have absolutely 
no meaning at all, I for my part am at times totally unable 
to determine. But where I can understand him he seems 
to me singularly wise ; and working in the same lines as 
Pestalozzi he in some respects advances far beyond his great 
predecessor. 



39B FROEBEL. 



" Cui omnia unum sunt. 



§ 1 6. Both these men were devotees of science; but 
instead of finding in science anything antagonistic to 
religion they looked upon science as the expression of the 
mind of God. Their belief was just that which Sir Thomas 
Browne had uttered more than 200 years before in the Religio 
Medici: "Though we christen effects by their most-sensible 
and nearest causes yet is God the true and infallible cause 
of all, whose concourse \i.e.^ concurrence, co-operation] 
though it be general, yet doth it subdivide itself into the 
particular actions of everything, and is that spirit by which 
each singular essence not only subsists but performs its 
operation."* With this belief Froebel sought to trace 
everything back to the central Unity, to God. The author 
of the De Imitatione Christih?iS said : "The man to whom 
all things are one, who refers all things to one and sees all 
things in one, he can stand firm and be at peace in God. 
Cui omnia unum sunt, et qui omnia ad unum trahit, et 
omnia in uno videt, potest stabilis esse et in Deo pacificus 
permanere " {De Im. Xti. lib. i ; cap. 3, § 2). So thought 
Froebel, and his great longing was to refer all things to one 
and see all things in one. However little we may share this 
longing we must admit that it is a natural outcome from the 
Christian reRgion. If there is One in Whom all " live and 
move and have their being," everything should be referred 
to Him. As Froebel says, " In AUem wirkt und schafi"t Ein 
Leben, Weil das Leben AH' ein einz'ger Gott gegeben. (In 
everything there works and stirs one life, because to all One 
God has given life.)" So long then as we remain Chr'stians 
we must agree with Froebel that all true education is 

* For this quotation, and for much besides (as will appear later on), 
I am indebted to Mr. H. Courthope Bowen. See his paper Froebei^i 
£ducation of Man. 



FROEBEL. 399 

Froebel's ideal. 



founded on Religion, Perhaps in the end we may adopt 
his high ideal and say with him, " Education should lead 
and guide man to clearness concerning himself and in 
himself, to peace with nature, and to unity with God ; 
hence, it should lift him to a knowledge of himself and 
of mankind, to a knowledge of God and of Nature, and to 
the pure and holy life to which such knowledge leads." 
{E. of M., Hailmann's t., 5.) "The object of education is 
the realization of a faithful, pure, inviolate, and hence holy 
life"(7J. 4). 

§ 17. This is indeed a high ideal ; and we naturally ask, 
If we would work towards it what road would Froebel point 
out to us ? This brings us to his theory of development or, 
as it has been called since Darwin, evolution. The idea of 
organic growth was first definitely applied to the young by 
Pestalozzi, but it was more clearly and consistently applied 
by Froebel. It has gone forth conquering and to conquer ; 
and though far indeed from being accepted by the teaching 
profession of this age, it is likely to have a vast influence on 
the practice of those who will come after them. I therefore 
give the following statement of it, which seems to me ex- 
cellent : — 

" The first thing to note in the idea of development is 
that it indicates, not an increase in bulk or quantity (though 
it may include this), but an increase in complexity of struc- 
ture, an improvement in power, skill, and variety in the 
performance of natural functions. We say that a thing is 
fully developed when its internal organisation is perfect in 
every detail, and when it can perform all its natural actions 
or functions perfectly. If we apply this distinction to mind, 
an increase in bulk will be represented by an increase in' 
the amount of material retained in the mind, in the 



400 FROEBEL. 



Theory of development. 



memory ; development will be a perfecting of the structure 
of the mind itself, an increase of power and skill and variety 
in dealing with knowledge, and in putting knowledge to all 
its natural uses. The next thing to consider is how this 
development is produced. How can we aid in promoting 
this change from germ to complete organism, from partially 
developed thing to more highly developed thing? The 
answer comes from every part of creation with ever-increas- 
ing clearness and emphasis — development is produced by 
exercise of function, use of faculty. Neglect or disuse of 
any part of an organism leads to the dwindling, and some- 
times even to the disappearance, of that part. And this 
applies not only to individuals, but stretches also from 
parent to child, from generation to generation, constituting 
then what we call heredity, or what Froebel calls the con- 
nectedness of humanity. Slowly through successive genera- 
tions a faculty or organ may dwindle and decay, or may be 
brought to greater and greater perfection. As Froebel 
puts it, humanity past, present, and future is one con- 
tinuous whole. The amount of development, then, possible 
in any particular case plainly depends partly on the original 
outfit, and partly (and as a rule in a greater measure) on 
the opportunities there have been for exercise, and the 
use made of those opportunities. If we wish to develop 
the hand, we must exercise the hand. If we wish to 
develop the body, we must exercise the body. If we wish 
to develop the mind, we must exercise the mind. If we 
wish to develop the whole human being, we must exercise 
the whole human being. But will any exercise suffice ? 
Again the answer is clear. Only that exercise which is 
always in harmony with the nature of the thing, and which 
is always proportioned to the strength of the thing, produces 



FROEBEL. 401 



Development thro' self-activity. 



true development. All other exercise is partially or wholly 
hurtful. And another condition, evident in every case, 
becomes still more evident when we apply these laws to the 
mind. To produce development most truly and effectively, 
the exercise must arise from and be sustained by the thing's 
own activity — its own natural powers, and all of them (as 
far as these are in any sense connected with the activity 
proposed) should be awakened and become naturally active. 
If, for instance, we desire to further the development of a 
plant, what we have to do is to induce the plant (and the 
whole of it) to become active in its own natural way, and 
to help it to sustain that activity. We may abridge the 
time ; we may modify the result ; but we must act through 
and by the plant's own activity. This activity of a thing's 
own self we call self-activity {E. of. M., § 9). We 
generally consider the mind in the light of its three activities 
of knowing, feeling, and willing. The exercise which aims at 
producing mental development must be in harmony with 
the nature of knowing, feeling, and willing, and continually 
in proportion to their strength. And, further, it is found 
that the more the activity is that of the whole mind, the 
more it is the mind's own activity — self-produced, and 
self-maintained, and self-directed — the better is the result. 
In other words, knowing, feeling, and willing must all take 
their rightful share in the exercise ; and, in particular, feel- 
ing and willing — the mind's powers of prompting and 
nourishing, of maintaining and directing its own activities — 
must never be neglected" (H. C. Bowen on Ed. of M.). 

§ 18. "A divine message or eternal regulation of the 
Universe there verily is, in regard to every conceivable 
procedure and affair of man \ faithfully following this, said 
procedure or affair will prosper . . . not following 



402 FROEBEL. 

True idea found in Nature. 

this . . . destruction and wreck are certain for every 
affair." These words of Carlyle's express Froebel's thought 
about education. Before attempting to educate we must 
do all we can to ascertain the divine message and must 
then direct our proceedings by it. The divine message 
must be learnt according to Froebel by studying the nature 
of the organism we have to assist in developing. Each 
human being must " develop from within, self-active and 
free, in accordance with the eternal law. This is the 
problem and the aim of all education in instruction and 
training ; there can be and should be no other " {Ed. of 
M., 13). For "all has come forth from the Divine, from 
God, and is through God alone conditioned. To this it 
is that all things owe their existence — to the Divine working 
in them. The Divine element that works in each thing is 
the true idea {das Wesen) of the thing." Therefore " the 
destiny and calling of all things is to develop their true idea, 
and in so doing to reveal God in outward and through 
passing forms." 

§ 19. What we must think of then is the "true idea" 
which each child should develop. How is this idea to be 
ascertained ? In other words, how are we to learn the 
Divine Message about the bringing up of children ? This 
Message is given us through the works of God. " In the 
creation, in nature and the order of the material world, and 
in the progress of mankind, God has given us the true type 
( Urbild) of education." 

§ 20. So Froebel would have all educators lay to heart 
the great principle of the Baconian philosophy : We com- 
mand Nature only by obeying her. They are to be very 
cautious how they interfere, and the education they give is 
to be "passive, following." Even in teaching they must 



FROEBEL. 403 



God acts and man acts. 



bear in mind, that " the purpose of teaching is to bring ever 
more out of man rather than to put more and more into 
him" {Ed. of M., -zt^.) Froebel in fact taught the 
Festalozzian doctrine that the function of the educator 
was that of " benevolent superintendence."* 

§ 21. But if Froebel would thus limit the action of the 
educator he would greatly extend the action of those 
educated ; and here we see the great principle with which 
the name of Froebel is likely to be permanently associated. 
"The starting-point of all that appears, of all that exists, 
and therefore of all intellectual conception, is act, action. 
From the act, from action, must therefore start true human 
education, the developing education of the man ; in action, 
in acting, it must be rooted and must spring up. . . . 
Living, acting, conceiving, — these must form a triple chord 
within every child of man, though the sound now of this 
string, now of that, may preponderate, and then again of 
two together." 

§ 22. Many thinkers before Froebel had seen the trans- 
cendent importance of action ; but Froebel not only based 
everything upon it, but he based it upon God. "God 
creates and works productively in uninterrupted continuity. 
Each thought of God is a work, a deed" {Ed. of M., § 23). 
As Jesus has said : " My Father worketh hitherto and I 

* The educator as teacher has his activity limited, according to 
D DeGarmo to these two things ; '* (i) 'Y\^q preparation of the child's 
mind for a rapid and effective assimilation of new knowledge ; (2) The 
piesentation of the matter of instruction in such order and manner as 
will best conduce to the most effective assimilation" [Essentials of 
Method by Chas. DeGarmo, Boston, U.S., D. C. Heath, 1889). 
Besides this he must make his pupils use their knowledge both new and 
old, and reproduce it in fresh connexions. 



404 FROEBEL. 

The formative and creative instinct. 

work " (St. John v, 1 7). From this it follows that, since 
God created man in his own image, " man should create 
and bring forth like God " {Ed. of M., ib.). " He who will 
early learn to recognise the Creator must early exercise his 
own power of action with the consciousness that he is bring- 
ing about what is good ; for the doing good is the link 
between the creature and the Creator, and the conscious 
doing of it the conscious connexion, the true living union 
of the man with God, of the individual man as of the human 
race, and is therefore at once the starting point and the 
eternal aim of all education." Elsewhere he says : " We 
become truly God-like in diligence and industry, in working 
and doing, which are accompanied by the clear perception 
or even by the vaguest feeling that thereby we represent the 
inner in the outer ; that we give body to spirit, and form to 
thought ; that we render visible the invisible ; that we 
impart an outward, finite, transient being to life in the 
spirit. Through this God-likeness we rise more and more 
to a true knowledge of God, to insight into His Spirit ; 
and thus, inwardly and outwardly, God comes ever 
nearer to us. Therefore Jesus says of the poor, * Theirs 
is the kingdom of heaven,' if they could but see and know 
it and practice it in diligence and industry, in productive 
and creative work. Of children too is the kingdom of 
heaven ; for unchecked by the presumption and conceit of 
adults they yield themselves in child-like trust and cheerful- 
ness to their formative and creative instinct" {Ed. of M., 

§ 23, P- 30- 

§ 23. This " formative and creative instinct " which as 
we must suppose has existed in all children in all nations 
and in all ages of the world, Froebel was the first to take 
duly into account for education. Pestalozzi saw the ira- 



FROEBEL. 405 



Rendering the inner outer. 



portance of getting children to think, and to think about 
their material surroundings. These the child can observe 
and search into ; and in doing this he may discover what is 
not at first obvious to sight or touch and may even ascertain 
relations between the several parts of the same thing or 
connexions between different things compared together. 
All these discoveries may be made by the child's self- 
activity, but only on one condition, viz. : that the child is 
interested. But in the search interest soon flags and then 
observation comes to an end. Besides, even while it lasts 
in full vigour the activity is mental only ; it is concerned 
with perceiving, taking in ; and for development something 
more is needed ; the organism must not only take in, it 
must also give out. And so we find in children a restless 
eagerness to touch, pull about, and change the condition 
of things around them. When this activity of theirs, instead 
of being checked is properly directed, the children are 
delighted in recognising desirable results which they them- 
selves have brought about; especially those which give 
expression to what is their own thought. In this way the 
child " renders the inner outer ;" and in thus satisfying his 
creative instinct he is led to exercise some faculties both of 
mind and body. 

§ 24. The prominence which Froebel gave to action, his 
doctrine that man is primarily a doer and even a creator, 
and that he learns only through *' self-activity," may pro- 
duce great changes in educational methods generally, and 
not simply in the treatment of children loo young for 
schooling. But it was to the first stage of life that Froebel 
paid the greatest attention, and it is over this stage that 
his influence is gradually extending. Froebel held that each 
age has a completeness of its own (" First the blade, then 



4o6 FROEBEL. 



Care for " young plants." Kindergarten. 

the ear, then the full corn in the ear "), and that the per- 
fection of the later stage can be attained only through the 
perfection of the earlier. If the infant is what he should be 
as an infant, and the child as a child, he will become what 
he should be as a boy, just as naturally as new shoots 
spring from the healthy plant. Every stage, then, must be 
cared for and tended in such a way that it may attain its 
own perfection. But as Bacon says with reference to 
.education, the gardener bestows most care on the young 
plants, and it was " the young plants " for whom Froebel 
designed his Kindergarten. Like Pestalozzi he attached 
the very highest importance to giving instruction to mothers. 
But he would not like Pestalozzi leave young children 
entirely in the mother's hands. There was something to 
be done for them which even the ideal mother in the ideal 
family could not do. Pestalozzi held that the child be- 
longed to the family. Fichte on the other hand claimed 
it for society and the state. Froebel, whose mind, like 
that of our own theologian Frederick Maurice, delighted 
in harmonising apparent contradictions, and who taught 
that " all progress lay through opposites to their reconcilia- 
tion," maintained that the child belongs both to the family 
and to society ; and he would therefore have children 
prepare for society by spending some hours of the day in a 
common life and in well-organised common employ- 
ments. 

§ 25. His study of children showed him that one of their 
most striking characteristics was restlessness. This was, 
first, restlessness of body, delight in mere motion of the 
limbs ; and, secondly, restlessness of mind, a constant 
curiosity about whatever came within the range of the 
senses, and especially a desire to examine with the hand 



FROEBEL. 407 



Child's restlessness : how to use it. 

every unknown object within reach.* Children's fondness 
for using their hands was especially noted by Froebel ; and 
he found that they delighted, not merely in examining by 
touch, but also in altering whatever they could alter, and 
further that they endeavoured to imitate known forms 
whether by drawing or whenever they could get any kind of 
plastic material by modelling. Besides remarking in them 
these various activities, he saw that children were sociable 
and needed the sympathy of companions. There was, too, 
in them a growing moral nature, passions, affections, and 
conscience, which needed to be controlled, responded to, 
cultivated. Both the restraints and the opportunities 
incident to a well-organised community would be beneficial 
to their moral nature, and prove a cure for selfishness. 

§ 26. As all education was to be sought in righdy directed 
but spontaneous action, Froebel considered how the children 
in this community should be employed. At that age their 
most natural employment is play, especially as Wordsworth 
has pointed out, games in which they imitate and " con the 
parts" they themselves will have to fill in after years. 
Froebel agreed with Montaigne that the games of children 
were " their most serious occupations," and with Locke that 
" all the plays and diversions of children should be directed 
towards good and useful habits, or else they will introduce 

* "LiUle children," says Joseph Payne, "are scarcely ever contented 
with simply doing nothing ; and their fidgetiness and unrest, which 
often give mothers and teachers so much anxiety, are merely the 
strugglings of the soul to get, through the body, some employment for 
its powers. Supply this want, give them an object to work upon, and 
you solve the problem. The divergence and distraction of the faculties 
cease as they converge upon the work, and the mind is at rest in its 
very occupation." V. to German Schools. 



408 FROEBEL. 

Employments in Kindergarten. 

ill ones" {Th. c. Ed., § 130). So he invented a course of 
occupations, a great part of which consisted in social games. 
Many of the names are connected with the " Gifts," as he 
called the series of simple playthings provided for the 
children, the first being the ball, " the type of unity." The 
"gifts" are chiefly not mere playthings but materials which 
the children work up in their own way, thus gaining scope 
for their power of doing and inventing and creating. The 
artistic faculty was much thought of by Froebel, and, as in 
the education of the ancients, the sense of rhythm in sound 
and motion was cultivated by music and poetry introduced 
in the games. Much care was to be given to the training 
of the senses, especially those of sight, sound, and touch. 
Intuition {Anschaiiung) was to be recognised as the true 
basis of knowledge, and though stories were to be told, and 
there was to be much intercourse in the way of social chat, 
instruction of the imparting and " learning-pp " kind was to 
be excluded. There was to be no " dead knowledge ; " in 
fact Froebel like Pestalozzi endeavoured to do for the child 
what Bacon nearly 200 years before had done for the 
philosopher. Bacon showed the philosopher that the way 
to study Nature was not to learn what others had surmised 
but to go straight to Nature and use his own senses and his 
own powers of observation. Pestalozzi and Froebel wished 
children to learn in this way as well as philosophers. 

§ 27. Schools for very young children existed before 
Froebel's Kindergarten, but they had been thought of more 
in the interest of the mothers than of the children. It was 
for the sake of the mothers that Oberlin established them 
in the Vosges more than a century ago, his first Condudrices 
de FEnfance being peasant women, Sara Banzet and Louise 
Scheppler. In the early part of this century the notion was 



FROEBEL. 409 

No schoolwork in Kindergarten. 

taken up by James Buchanan and Samuel Wilderspin in 
this country (see James Leitch's Practical Educationists) 
and by J. M. D. Cochin in France. But Froebel's con- 
ception differed from that of the *' Infant School." His 
object was purely educational but he would have no 
"schooling." He called these communities of children 
Kindergarten, Gardens of children, i.e., enclosures in which 
young human plants are nurtured.* The children's em- 
ployment is to be play. But any occupation in which 
children delight is play to them ; and Froebel's series of 
employments, while they are in this sense play to the 
children, have nevertheless, as seen from the adult point of 
view, a distinctly educational object. This object, as Froebel 
himself describes it, is " to give the children employment in 
agreement with their whole nature, to strengthen their 
bodies, to exercise their senses, to engage their awakening 
mind, and through their senses to bring them acquainted 
with nature and their fellow-creatures ; it is especially to 
guide aright the heart and the affections, and to lead them 
to the original ground of all life, to. unity with themselves." 
§ 28. No less than six-and-thirty years ago Henry 
Barnard (in his Report to Governor of Connecticut, 1854) 
declared the Kindergarten to be " by far the most original, 
attractive, and philosophical form of infant development the 
world has yet seen." Since then it has spread in all 

* I entirely agree with Joseph Payne that where the language spoken 
is not German, it would be well to discard Kindergarten, Kindergdrtner, 
and Kindergdrtnerin. All who have to do with children should master 
some great principles taught by Froebel, but there is no need for them 
to learn German or to use German words. The French seem satisfied 
with Jardin d^Enfants, but we are not likely to be with Children- 
Garden. Playschool might do. 



4IO FROEBEL. 

Without the idea the "gifts " fail. 

civilised lands, and in many of them there are now publii 
Kindergartens, the first I believe having been established 
in 1873 by Dr. William T. Harris in St. Louis, Mo. B it 
Froebel's ideas are not so easily got hold of as his " Gifts," 
and the real extension of his system may be by no means 
so great as it seems. " The Kindergarten system in the 
hands of one who understands it," says Dr. James Ward, 
" produces admirable results ; but it is apt to be too 
mechanical and formal. There does not seem room for the 
individuality of a child, to which all free play possible 
should be given in the earliest years." (In Parents' Review 
Ap. 1890.) And Mr. Courthope Bowen has well said: 
" Kindergarten work without the Kindergarten idea, like a 
body without a soul, is subject to rapid degeneration and 
decay." So perhaps it will in the end prove that Froebel in 
Yivs, Education of Man vAixciki \% "a book with seven seals" 
has left us a more precious legacy than in his " Gifts " and 
Occupations which are so popular and so easily adopted. 

§ 29. It has been well said that " the essence of stupidity 
is in the demand for final opinions." How our thoughts 
have widened about education since a man like Dr. Johnson 
could assert, " Education is as well known, and has long 
been as well known, as ever it can be !"* (Hill's Boswell's 
J. ij, 407.) The astronomers of the Middle Ages might 
as well have asserted that nothing more could ever be 
known about astronomy. 

Was Froebel what he believed himself to be, the Kepler 



* Contrast this with what has been said by an eminent thinker of our 
time : " No art of equal importance to mankind has been so little in- 
vestigated scientifically as the art of teaching." Sir H. S. Maine, 
quoted in J. H. Hoose's M. of Teaching. 



FROEBEL. 411 



The New Education and the old. 

or the Newton of the educational system ? Whoso is wise 
will not during the nineteenth century lay claim to a " final 
opinion " on this point. But the " New Education " seems 
gaining ground. F. W. Parker emphatically declares " the 
Kindergarten " (by which he probably means Froebel's 
encouragement of self-activity) to be " the most important far- 
reaching educational reform of the nineteenth century." 
We sometimes see it questioned whether the " New Educa- 
tion " has any proper claim to its title ; but the education 
which Dr. Johnson considered final and which seems to us 
old aimed at learning ; and the education which aims not 
at learning, but at developing through self-activity is so 
different from this that it may well be called New. If we 
consider the platform of the New Educationists as it stands, 
e.g., in the New York School Joicrtial, we shall find that if it 
is not all new in theory it would be substantially new in 
practice. 

§ 30. Let us look at a brief statement of what the " New 
Education " requires : — 

1. Each study must be valued in proportion as it develops 
power ; and power is developed by self-activity. 

2. The memory must be employed in strict subservience 
to the higher faculties of the mind. 

3. Whatever instruction is given, it must be adapted to 
the actual state of the pupil, and not ruled by the wants of 
the future boy or man. 

4. More time must be given to the study of nature and to 
modern language and literature ; less to the ancient 
languages. 

5. The body must be educated as well as the mind. 

6. Rich and poor alike must be taught to use their eyes 
and hands. 



412 FROEBEL. 

The old still vigorous. 

7. The higher education of women must be cared for no 
less than that of men. 

8. Teachers, no less than doctors, must go through a 
course of professional training. 

To these there must in time be added another : 

9. All methods shall have a scientific foundation, />., 
they shall be based on the laws of the mind, or shall have 
been tested by those laws. 

§ 31. When this program is adopted, even as the 
object of our efforts, we shall, indeed, have a New Educa- 
tion. At present the encouragement of self-activity is 
thought of, if at all, only as a " counsel of perfection " Our 
school work is chiefly mechanical and will long remain so. 
*' From the primary school to the college productive creative 
doing is almost wholly excluded. Knowledge in its 
barrenest form is communicated, and tested in the barrenest, 
wordiest way possible. Never is the learner taught or 
permitted to apply his knowledge to even second-hand 
life-purpose. ... So inveterate is the habit of the 
school that the Kindergarten itself, although invented by 
the deep-feeling and far-seeing Froebel for the very purpose 
of correcting this fault, has in most cases fallen a victim to 
its influence." So says W. H. Hailmann {Kindergarten, 
May, 1888) and those who best know what usually goes on 
in the school-room are the least likely to differ from him. 

§ 32. During the last thirty years I have spent the 
greatest part of my working hours in a variety of school- 
rooms ; and if my school experience has shown me that our 
advance is slow, my study of the Reformers convinces me 
that it is sure. 

" Ring out the old, ring in the new I' 



FROEBEL. 413 

Science the thought of God. Some Froebelians. 

It has been well said that to study science is to study the 
thoughts of God ; and thus it is that all true educational 
Reformers declare the thoughts of God to us. " A divine 
message, o: eternal regulation of the Universe, there verily 
is in regard to every conceivable procedure and affair of 
man ;" and it behoves us to ascertain what that message is 
in regard to the immensely important procedure and affair 
of bringing up children. After innumerable mistakes we 
seem by degrees to be getting some notion of it ; and such 
insight as we have we owe to those who have contiibuted 
to the science of education. Among these there are 
probably no greater names than the names of Pestalozzi and 
Froebel. 



Froebel's Education of Man, trans, by W. N. Hailmann, is a vol, of 
Appleton's Series, ed. by Dr. W. T. Harris. The Autobiography trans., 
by Michaelis and Moore, is published by Sonnenschein. The Mtttter-u- 
K. -lieder have been trans, by Miss Lord (London, Rice). Reminiscences 
of Froebel by the Baroness Marenholz-Blilow, is trans, by Mr. Horace 
Mann. 7'ke Child and Child Nature is trans, from the Baroness by 
Miss A. M. Christie. The Froebel lit. is now immense. I will simply 
mention some of those who have expounded Froebel in English : Miss 
Shirreff, Miss E. A. Manning, Miss Lyschinska, Miss Heerwart, Mdme. 
De Portugall, Miss Peabody, H. C. Bowen, F. W. Parker, W. N. 
Hailmann, Joseph Payne, W. T. Harris, are the names that first suggest 
themselves. Henry Barnard's Kindergarten and Child Culture is a 
valuable collection of papers. 



XVIII. 
JACOTOT, A METHODIZER. 



1 7 70-1 840. 



§ 1. We are now by degrees becoming convinced that 
teachers, like everyone else who undertakes skilled labour, 
should be trained before they seek an engagement. This 
has led to a great increase in the number of Normal Schools, 
In some of these schools it has already been discovered that 
while the study of principles requires much time and the 
application of much intellectual force, the study of methods 
is a far simpler matter and can be knocked off in a short 
time and with no intellectual force at all. Methods are 
special ways of doing things, and when it has been settled 
what is to be done and why, a knowledge of the methods 
available adds greatly to a teacher's power ; but the what 
and the why demand our attention before the how, and the 
study of methods disconnected from principles leads straight 
to the prison-house of all the teachers' higher faculties — 
routine. 

§ 2. I have called Jacotot a methodizer because he 
invented a special method and wished everything to be 
taught by it. But in advocating this method he appeals to 
principles ; and his principles are so important that at least 



JACOTOT. 415 

Self-teaching. 

one man great in educational science, Joseph Payne, always 
spoke of him as his master. 

§ 3. In the following summary of Jacotot's system I 
am largely indebted to Joseph Payne's Lectures, which he 
published in the Educational Titnes in 1867, and which I 
believe Dr. J. F. Payne has lately reprinted in a volume of 
his father's collected papers. 

§ 4. Jacotot was born at Dijon, of humble parentage, in 
1770. Even as a boy he showed his preference for "self- 
teaching." We are told that he rejoiced greatly in the ac- 
quisition of all kinds of knowledge that could be gained by 
his own efforts, while he steadily resisted what was imposed on 
him by authority. He v/as, however, early distinguished by 
his acquirements, and at the age of twenty-five was appointed 
sub-director of the Polytechnic School. Some years after- 
wards he became Professor of " the Method of Sciences " at 
Dijon, and it was here that his method of instruction first 
attracted attention. " Instead of pouring forth a flood of 
information on the subject under attention from his own 
ample stores — explaining everj'thing, and thus too frequently 
superseding in a great degree the pupil's own investigation 
of It — Jacotot, after a simple statement of the subject, with 
its leading divisions, boldly started it as a quarry for the 
class to hunt down, and invited every member of it to take 
part in the chase." All were free to ask questions, to raise 
objections, to suggestanswers. The Professor himself did little 
more than by leading questions put them on the right scent. 
He was afterwards Professor of Ancient and Oriental Lan- 
guages, of Mathematics, and of Roman Law ; and he pursued 
the same method, we are told, with uniform success. Being 
compelled to leave France as an enemy of the Bourbons, he 
was appointed, in 1818, when he, was forty-eight years old, 



41 6 JACOTOT. 

I. All can learn. 



to the Professorship of the French Language and Literature 
at the University of Louvain. The celebrated teacher was 
received with enthusiasm, but he soon met with an un- 
expected difficulty. Many members of his large class knew 
no language but the Flemish and Dutch, and of these he 
himself was totally ignorant. He was, therefore, forced to 
consider how to teach without talking to his pupils. The 
plan he adopted was as follows : — He gave the young 
Flemings copies of Fenelon's " Telemaque," with the French 
on one side, and a Dutch translation on the other. This 
they had to study for themselves, comparing the two 
languages, and learning the French by heart. They were 
to go over the same ground again and again, and as soon 
as possible they were to give in French, however bad, the 
substance of those parts which they had not yet committed 
to memor}'. This method was found to succeed marvel- 
lously. Jacotot attributed its success to the fact that the 
students had learnt entirely by the efforts of their own tninds, 
and that, though working under his superintendence, they 
had been, in fact, their own teachers. Hence he proceeded 
to generalise, and by degrees arrived at a series of astounding 
paradoxes. These paradoxes at first did their work well, 
and made noise enough in the world ; but Jacotot seems 
to me like a captain who in his eagerness to astonish his 
opponents takes on board guns much too heavy for his own 
safety. 

§ 5. ^^ All human beings are equally capable of learning" 
said Jacotot. 

The truth which Jacotot chose to throw into this more than 
doubtful form, may perhaps be expressed by saying that the 
student's power of learning depends, in a great measure, on 
his ivill, and that where there is no will there is no capacity. 



JACOTOT. 417 

2. Everyone can teach. 

§ 6. " Everyone can teach ; and, moreover^ can teach that 
which he does not knoiu himself." 

Let us ask ourselves what is the meaning of this. First 
of all, we have to get rid of some ambiguity in the meaning 
of the word teach. To teach, according to Jacotot's idea, is 
to cause to learn. Teaching and learning are therefore 
correlatives : where there is no learning there can be no 
teaching. But this meaning of the word only coincides 
partially with the ordinary meaning. We speak of the 
lecturer or preacher as teaching when he gives his hearers 
an opportunity of learning, and do not say that his teaching 
ceases the instant they cease to attend. On the other hand, 
we do not call a parent a teacher because he sends his boy 
to school, and so causes him to learn. The notion of teach- 
ing, then, in the minds of most of us, includes giving 
information, or showing how an art is to be performed, and 
we look upon Jacotot's assertion as absurd, because we feel 
that no one can give information which he does not possess, 
or show how anything is to be done if he does not himself 
know. But let us take the Jacototian definition of teaching 
• — causing to learn — and then see how far a person can 
cause another to learn that of which he himself is ignorant. 

§ 7. Subjects which are taught may be divided into 
three great classes : — i, Facts ; 2, reasonings, or generalisa- 
tion from facts, i.e., science ; 3, actions which have to be 
performed by the learner, i.e., arts. 

I. We learn some facts by " intilition," i.e., by direct 
experience. It may be as well to make the number of them 
as large as possible. No doubt there are no facts which are 
known so perfectly as these. For instance, a boy who has 
tried to smoke knows the fact that tobacco is apt to pro- 
duce nausea much better than another who has picked up 

(10 



41 8 JACOTOT. 

Can he teach facts he does not know ? 

the information second-hand. An intelligent master may 
suggest experiments, even in matters about which he himself 
is ignorant, and thus, in Jacotot's sense, he teaches things 
which he does not know. But some facts cannot be learnt 
in this way, and then a NevNlon is helpless either to find 
them out for himself, or to teach them to others without 
knowing them. If the teacher does not know in what 
county Tavistock is, he can only learn from those who do, 
and the pupils will be no cleverer than their master. Here, 
then, I consider that Jacotot's pretensions utterly break 
down. "No," the answer is; "the teacher may give his 
pupil an atlas, and direct the boy to find out for himself: 
thus the master will teach what he does not know." But, 
in this case, he is a teacher only so far as he knows. For 
what he does not know, he hands over the pupil to the 
maker of the map, who communicates with him, not orally, 
but by ink and paper. The master's ignorance is simply an 
obstacle to the boy's learning; for the boy would learn 
sooner the position of Tavistock if it were shown him on 
the map. " That's the very point," says the disciple of 
Jacotot. "If the boy gets the knowledge without any 
trouble, he is likely to forget it again directly. 'Lightly 
come, lightly go.* Moreover, his faculty of observation will 
not have been exercised." It is indeed well not to allow 
the knowledge even of facts to come too easily ; though the 
difficulties which arise from the master's ignorance will 
not be found the most advantageous. Still there is obviously 
a limit. If we gave boys their lessons in cipher, and 
offered a prize to the first decipherer, one would probably 
be found at last, and meantime all the boys' powers of 
observatidn, &c., would have been cultivated by comparing 
like signs in dilTerent positions, and guessing at their mean- 



JACOTOT. 419 

Languages ? Sciences ? 

ing ; but the boys' time might have been better employed. 
Jacotot's plan of teaching a language which the master did 
not know, was to put a book with, say, " Arma virumque 
cano," &c., on one side, and " I sing arms and the man, &c." 
on the other, and to require the pupil to puzzle over it till 
he found out which word answered to which. In this case 
the teacher was the translator ; and though from the round- 
about way in which the knowledge was communicated the 
pupil derived some benefit, the benefit was hardly sufficient 
to make up for the expenditure of time involved. 

Jacotot, then, did not teach facts of which he was igno- 
rant, except in the sense in which the parent who sends his 
boy to school may be said to teach him. All Jacotot did 
was to direct the pupil to learn, sometimes in a very 
awkward fashion, from somebody else.* 

§ 8. 2. When we come to science, we find all the best 
authorities agree that the pupil should be led to principles 
if possible, and not have the principles brought to him. 
Men like Tyndall, Huxley, H. Spencer, J. M. Wilson have 
spoken eloquently on this subject, and shown how valuable 
scientific teaching is, when thus conducted, in drawing out 
the faculties of the mind. But although a schoolboy may 
be led to great scientific discoveries by anyone who knows 
the road, he will have no more chance of making them with 
an ignorant teacher than he would have had in the days of 
the Ptolemies. Here again, then, I cannot understand how 
the teacher can teach what he does not know. He may, 
indeed, join his pupil in investigating principles, but he 



• Here Jacotot's notion of teaching reminds one of the sophism 
quoted by Montaigne — "A Westphalia ham makes a man drink. Drink 
quenches thirst. Therefore a Westphalia ham quenches thirst." 



420 JACOTOT. 

Arts such as drawing and music ? 

must either keep with the pupil or go in advance of him. 
In the first case he is only a fellow-pupil ; in the second, he 
teaches only that which he knows. 

§ 9. Finally, we come to arts, and we are told that 
Jacotot taught drawing and music, without being either a 
draughtsman or a musician. In art everything depends on 
rightly directed practice. The most consummate artist 
cannot communicate his skill, and, except for inspiration 
may be inferior as a teacher to one whose attention is more 
concentrated on the mechanism of the art. Perhaps it is 
not even necessary that the teacher should be able to do the 
exercises himself, if only he knows how they should be done; 
but he seldom gets credit for this knowledge, unless he can 
show that he knows how the thing should be done, by 
doing it. Lessing tells us that Raphael would have been a 
great painter even if he had been born without hands. He 
would not, however, have succeeded in getting mankind to 
believe it. I grant, then, that the teacher of art need not be 
a first-rate artist, and, in some very exceptional cases, need 
not be an artist at all ; but, if he cannot perform the exer- 
cises he gives his pupil, he must at least know how they 
should be done. But Jacotot claims perfect ignorance. We 
are told that he "taught" drawing by setting objects before 
his pupils, and making them imitate them on paper as best 
they could. Of course the art originated in this way, and a 
person with great perseverance, and (I must say, in spite of 
Jaootot) with more than average ability, would make con- 
siderable progress with no proper instruction ; but he would 
lose much by the ignorance of the person calling himself his 
teacher. An awkward habit of holding the pencil will make 
skill doubly difficult to acquire, and thus half his time might 
be wasted. Then, again, he would hardly have a better eye 



JACOTOT. ■ 42 r 

True teacher within the learner. 

than the early painters, so the drawing of his landscape 
would not be less faulty than theirs. To consider music 
I am told that a person who is ignorant of music can teach, 
say, the piano or the violin. This seems to go beyond the 
region of paradox into that of utter nonsense. Talent often 
surmounts all kinds of difficulties ; but in the case of selt 
taught, and ill-taught musicians, it is often painful to see 
what time and talent have been wasted for want of proper 
instruction. 

I have thus carefully examined Jacotot's pretensions to 
teach what he did not know, because I am anxious that 
what seems to me the rubbish should be cleared away from 
his principles, and should no longer conceal those parts of 
his system which are worthy of general attention. 

§ 10. At the root of Jacotot's paradox lay a truth of very 
great importance. The highest and best teaching is not that 
which makes the pupils passive recipients of other peoples' 
ideas (not to speak of the teaching which conveys mere 
words without any ideas at all), but that which guides and 
encourages the pupils in working for themselves and think- 
ing for themselves. The master, as Joseph Payne well says, 
can no more think, or practise, or see for his pupil, than he 
can digest for him, or walk for him. The pupil must owe 
everything to his own exertions, which it is the function of 
the master to encourage and direct. Perhaps this may seem 
very obvious truth, but obvious or not it has been very 
generally neglected. The old system of lecturing which 
found favour with the Jesuits, has indeed now passed away, 
and boys are left to acquire facts from school-books instead 
of from the master. But this change is merely accidental. 
The essence of the teaching still remains. Even where the 
master does not confine himself to hcarinc; what the scholars 



422 JACOTOT. 

Training rather than teaching-. 

have learnt by heart, he seldom does more than offer 
explanations. He measures the teaching rather by the 
amount- which has been put before the scholars — by what he 
has done for them and shown them — than by what they 
have learned. But this is not teaching of the highest type. 
When the votary of Dulness in the *' Dunciad " is rendering 
an account of his services, he arrives at this climax, 

" For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, 
"And write about it, Goddess, and about it." 

And in the same spirit Mr. J. M. Wilson stigmatises 
as synonymous " the most stupid and most didactic 
teaching." 

§ ir. All the eminent authorities on education have a 
very different theory of the teacher's function. According 
to them the master's attention is not to be fixed on his own 
mind and his own store of knowledge, but on his pupil's 
mind and on its gradual expansion. He must, in fact, be 
not so much a teacher as a trainer. Here we have the view 
which Jacotot intended to enforce by his paradox ; for we 
may possibly train faculties which we do not ourselves 
possess, just as the sportsman trains his pointer and his 
hunter to perform feats which are altogether out of the range 
of his own capacities. Now, " training is the cultivation 
bestowed on any set of faculties with the object of develop- 
ing them " (J. M. Wilson), and to train any faculty, you 
must set it to work. Hence it follows, that as boys' minds 
are not simply their memories, the master must aim at 
something more than causing his pupils to remember facts. 
Jacotot has done good service to education by giving pro 
mincnce to this truth, and by showing in his method how 
other faculties may be cultivated besides the memory. 



JACOTOT. 423 

3. Tout est dans tout. Quidlibet ex quolibet. 

§ 1 2. " Tout est dans tout " ( " All is in all " ), is another of 
Jacotot's paradoxes. I do not propose discussing it as the 
philosophical thesis which takes other forms, as"Eveiy 
man is a microcosm," &c., but merely to inquire uito its 
meaning as applied to didactics. 

If you asked an ordinary French schoolmaster who 
Jacotot was, he would probably answer, Jacotot was a man 
who thought you could learn everything by getting up 
Fenelon's " Telemaque " by heart. By carrying your investi- 
gation further, you would find that this account of him 
required modification, that the learning by heart was only 
part, and a very small part, of what Jacotot demanded from 
his pupils, but you would also find that entire mastery of 
"Telemaque" was the first requisite, and that he managed to 
connect everything he taught with that " model-book." Of 
course, if" tout est dans tout," everything is in " Telemaque;" 
and, said an objector, also in the first book of " Telemaque " 
and in the first word. Jacotot went through a variety of 
subtilties to show that all " Telemaque " is contained in the 
word Calypso, and perhaps he would have been equally 
successful, if he had been required to take only the first 
letter instead of the first word. His maxim indeed becomes 
by his treatment of it a mere paraphrase of " Quidlibet ex 
quolibetr The reader is amused rather than convinced by 
these discussions, but he finds them not without fruit. 
They bring to his mind very forcibly a truth to which he 
has hitherto probably not paid sufficient attention. He sees 
that all knowledge is connected together, or (what will do 
equally well for our present purpose) that there aie a 
thousand links by which we may bring into connexion the 
different subjects of knowledge. If by means of these links 
we can attach in our minds the knowledge we acquire to 



1-24 JACOTOT. 

Connexion of knowledges. 

the knowledge we already possess, we shall learn faster 
and more intelligently, and at the same time we shall have 
a much better chance of retaining our new acquisitions. 
The memory, as we all know, is assisted even by artificial 
association of ideas, much more by natural. Hence the 
value of " tout est dans tout," or, to adopt a modification 
suggested by Joseph Payne, of the connexion of knowledges. 
Suppose we know only one subject, but know that 
thoroughly, our knowledge, if I may express myself 
algebraically, cannot be represented by ignorance plus the 
knowledge of that subject. We have acquired a great deal 
more than that. When other subjects come before us, they 
may prove to be so connected with what we had before, that 
we may also seem to know them already. In other words 
when we know a little thoroughly, though our actual 
possession is small, we have potentially a great deal more.* 

§ 13. Jacotot's practical application of his " tout est dans 
tout" was as follows : — ^^11 f aid apprendre quel que chose, ety 
rapporter tout le reste.^' ("The pupil must learn something 
thoroughly, and refer everything to that.") For language 
he must take a model book, and become thoroughly master 
of it. His knowledge must not be a verbal knowledge only, 
but he must enter into the sense and spirit of the writer. 
Here we find that Jacotot's practical advice coincides with 
that of many other great authorities, who do not base it on 
the same principle. The Jesuits' maxim was, that their 
pupils should always learn something thoroughly, however 

* See H. Courthope Eowen on "Connectedness in Teaching" 
(Educational Times, June, 1890). Mr. Bowen quotes from H. Spencer 
— " Knowledge of the lowest kind is un-uniped knowledge : science is 
partially unified knowledge : philosophy is completely unified know- 
ledge." 



JACOTOT. 425 

Connect with model book. Memorizing. 

little n. might be. Pestalozzi insisted on the children going 
over the elements again and again till they were completely 
master of them. Ascham, Ratke, and Comenius all recjuired 
a model-book to be read and re-read till words and thoughts 
were firmly fixed in the pupil's memory. Jacotot probably 
never read Ascham's " Schoolmaster." If he had done so 
he might have appropriated some of Ascham's words as 
exactly conveying his own thoughts. Ascham, as we saw, 
recommended that a short book should be thoroughly 
mastered, each lesson being worked over in different ways a 
dozen times at the least, and in this way " your scholar shall 
be brought not only to like eloquence, but also to all true 
understanding and right judgment, both for writing and 
speaking." In this the Englishman and the Frenchman are 
in perfect accord. 

§ 14. But if Jacotot agrees so far with earlier authorities, 
there is one point in which he seems to differ from them. 
He makes great demands on the memory, and requires six 
books of " Telemaque " to be learned by heart. On the 
other hand, Montaigne, Locke, Rousseau, H. Spencer, and 
other great writers would be opposed to this. Ratkc 
insisted that nothing should be learnt by heart. Protests 
against " loading the memory," '* saying without book," &c., 
are everywhere to be met with, and nowhere more vigorously 
expressed than in Ascham. He says of the grammar-school 
boys of his time, that "their whole knowledge, by learning 
without the book, was tied only to their tongue and lips, 
and never ascended up to the brain and head, and therefore 
was soon spit out of the mouth again. They learnt with- 
out book everything, they understood within the book 
little or nothing." But these protests were really directed 
at verbal knowledge, when it- is made to take the place of 



426 JACOTOT. 

Ways of studying the model book. 

knowledge of the thing signified. We are always too ready 
to suppose that words are connected with ideas, though both 
old and young are constantly exposing themselves to the 
sarcasm of Mephistophelcs : — 

. . . eben wo Begriffe fehlen, 

Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein. 

. . . just where meaning fails, a word 
Comes pally in to serve your turn. 

Against this danger Jacotot took special precautions. 
The pupil was to undergo an examination in everything 
connected with the lesson learnt, and the master's share in 
the work was to convince himself, from the answers he 
received, that the pupil thoroughly grasped the meaning, as 
well as remembered the words, of the author. Still the six 
books of " Telemaque," which Jacotot gave to be learnt by 
heart, was a very large dose, and he would have been more 
faithful to his own principles, says Joseph Payne, if he had 
given the first book only. 

§ 15. There are three ways in which the model-book 
may be studied. ist, it may be read through rapidly 
again and again, which was Ratke's plan and Hamilton's ; 
or, 2nd, each lesson may be thoroughly mastered, read in 
various ways a dozen times at the least, which was Ascham's 
plan ; or, 3rd, the pupil may begin always at the beginning, 
and advance a little further each time, which was Jacotot's 
plan.* This last, could not, of course, be carried very far, 

* As I have said above (p. 89) these methodizers in language-learning 
may, with regard to the first stage, be divided into two parties which 
I have called Complete Kctaiiicrs and Rapid hnprcssionists. Two Com- 
plete Retainers, Robertson and Prendergast, have, as it seems to me, 
mai'c, since Jacotot, a great advance on his method and that of his 



JACOTOT. 427 

Should the book be made or chosen ? 

The repetitions, when the pupil had got on some way in 
the book, could not always be from the beginning; still 

predecessor Ascham. As I have had a good deal of experience with 
l)eginners in German, I will give from an old lecture of mine the main 
conclusions at which I have arrived : — " My principle is to attack the most 
vital part of the language, and at first to keep the area small, or rather to 
enlarge it very slowly ; but within that area I want to get as much variety 
as possible. The study of a book written in the language should be 
carried o\i pari passu with drill in its common inflexions. Now arises 
the question, Should the book be made with the object of teaching the 
language, or should it be selected from those written for other purposes ? 
I see much to be said on either side. The three great facts we have to 
turn to account in teaching a language, are these : — first, a few words 
recur so constantly that a knowledge of them and grasp of them gives 
us a power in the language quite out of proportion to their number ; 
second, large classes of words admit of many variations of meaning by 
inflection, which variations we can understand from analogy ; third, 
compound words are formed ad infinitum on simple laws, so that the 
root word supplies the key to a whole family. Now, if the book is 
written by the language-teacher, he has the whole language before him, 
and he can make the most of all these advantages. He can use only 
the important words of the language ; he can repeat them in various 
connections ; he can bring the main facts of inflection and construction 
before the learner in a regular order, which is a great assistance to the 
memory ; he can give the simple words before introducing words com- 
pounded of them ; and he can provide that, when a word occurs for tne 
first time, the learners shall connect it with its root meaning. A short 
book securing all these advantages would, no doubt, be a very useful 
implement, but I have never seen such a book. Almost all delectuses, 
&c., bury the learner with a pile of new words, under which he feels 
himself powerless. So far as I know, the book has yet to be written. 
And even if it were written, with the greatest success from a linguistic 
point of view, it would of course make no pretension to a meaning. 
Having myself gone through a course of Ahn and of Ollendorf, I re- 
member, as a sort of nightmare, innumerable questions and answers, 
such as " Have you my thread stockings? No, I have your worsted 
stockings." Still more repulsive are the long sentences of Mr. Prender- 



428 JACOTOT. 

Robertsonian plan. 

every part was to be repeated so frequently that nothing 
could be forgotten. Jacotot did not wish his pupils to learn 

gast : — " How much must I give to the cabdriver to take my father to 
the Bank in New Street before his second breakfast, and to bring him 
home again before half-past two o'clock?" I cannot forget Voltaire's 
mot, which has a good deal of truth in it, — " Every way is good but the 
tiresome way." And most of the books written for beginners are inex- 
pressibly tiresome. No doubt it will be said, "Unless you adopt the 
rapid-impressionist plan, any book mttst be tiresome. What is a mean- 
ing at first becomes no meaning by frequent repetition." This, however, 
is not altogether true. I myself have taught Niebuhr's Heroeiigeschichten 
for years, and I know some chapters by heart ; but the old tales of 
Jason and Hercules 3i they are told in Niebuhr's simple language do 
not bore me in the least, 

" Ein Begriff muss bei dem Worte sein," 
says the Student in Faust ; and a notion — a very pleasing notion, too — 
remains to me about every word in the Heroengeschichten. 

These, then, would be my books to be worked at the same time by a 
beginner, say in German : — A book for drill in the principal inflexions, 
followed by the main facts about gender, &c., and a book like the 
HcrocngeschicJiten. This I would have prepared very much after the 
Robertsonian manner. It should be printed, as should also the Primer, 
in good-sized Roman type ; though, in an appendix, some of it should 
be reprinted in German type. The book should be divided into short 
lessons. A translaiion of each lesson should be given in parallel columns. 
Then should come a vocabulary', in which all useful information should 
be given about the really important words, the iinimportant words being 
neglected. Finally should come variations, and exercises in the lessons ; 
and in these the important words of that and previous lessons should be 
used exclusively. The exercises should be such as the pupils could do 
in writing out of school, and vivd voce in school. They should be very 
easy — real exercises in what is already known, not a series of linguistic 
puzzles. The object of the exercises, and also of a vast number of vivA 
voce questions, should be to accustom the pupil to use his knowledge 
readily. (But some teachers, young teachers especially, are always 
fro^j-examining, and seem to themselves to fail when their questions are 



JACOTOT. 429 

Hints for exercises. 

simply in order to forget, but to learn in order to remember 
for ever. "We are learned," said he, "not so far as we 



answered without difficulty.) The ear, the voice, the hand, should ail 
be practised on each lesson. When the construing is known, transcrip- 
tion of the German is not by any means to be despised. A good 
variety of transcription is, for the teacher to write the German clause by 
clause on the black-board, and rub out each clause before the pupils 
begin to write it. Then a known piece may be prepared for dictation. 
In reading this as dictation, the master may introduce small variations, 
to teach his pupils to keep their ears open. He may, as another exer- 
cise, read the German aloud, and stop here and there for the boys to 
give the English of the last sentence read ; or he may read to them 
either the exact German in the book or small variations on it, and make 
the pupils translate vivd voce, clause by clause. He may then ask 
questions on the piece in German and require answers in English. 

For exercises, there are many devices by which the pupil may be 
trained to observation, and also be confirmed in his knowledge of back 
lessons. The great teacher, F. A. Wolf, used to make his own children 
ascertain how many times such and such a word occurred in such and 
such pages. As M. Breal says, children are collectors by nature ; and, 
acting on this hint, we might say, " Write in column all the dative cases 
on pages a to c, and give the English and the corresponding nomina- 
tives." Or, " Copy from those pages all the accusative prepositions 
with the accusatives after them." Or, " Write out the past participles, 
with their infinitives." Or, "Translate such and such sentences, and 
explain them with reference to the context." Or, questions may be 
asked on the subject-matter of the book. There is no end to the 
possible varieties of such exercises. 

As soon as they get any feeling of the language, the pupils should 
learn by heart some easy poetry in it. I should recommend their learn- 
ing the English of the piece first, and then getting the German vivd voce 
from the teacher. To quicken the German in their minds, I think it is 
well to give them in addition a German prose version, using almost the 
same words. Variations of the more important sentences should be 
learnt at the same time. 

In all these suggestions you will see what I am aiming at I wish 



430 JACOTOT. 

The good of having learnt. 

have learned, but only so far as we remember." He seems, 
indeed, almost to ignore the fact that the act of learning 
serves other purposes than that of making learned, and to 
assert that to forget is the same as never to have learned, 
which is a palpable error. We necessarily forget much 
that passes through our minds, and yet its effect remains. 
All grown people have arrived at some opinions, convictions, 
knowledge, but they cannot call to mind every spot they 
trod on in the road thither. When we have read a great 
history, say, or travelled through a fresh country, we have 
gained more than the number of facts we happen to re- 
member. The mind seems to have formed an acquaintance 
with that history or that country, which is something different 
from the mere acquisition of facts. Moreover, our interests, 
as well as our ideas, may long survive the memory of the 
facts which originally started them. We are told that one 
of the old judges, when a barrister objected to some dictum 
of his, put him down by the assertion, "Sir, I have for- 
gotten more law than ever you read." If he wished to 
make the amount forgotten a measure of the amount re- 
membered, this was certainly fallacious, as the ratio between 
the two is not a constant quantity. But he may have meant 
that this extensive reading had left its result, and that he 
could see things from more points of view than the less 
travelled legal vision of his opponent. That power acquired 
by learning may also last longer than the knowledge of 
the thing learned is sufficiently obvious. So the advantages 
derived from having learnt a thing are not entirely lost 
when the thing itself is forgotten.* 

the learner to get a feeling of, and a power over, the main words of the 
language and the machinery in which they are employed, 

• I append in a note a passage from the old edition of this book re* 



JACOTOT. 431 

The old Cambridge " mathematical man." 

§ 1 6. But the reflection by no means justifies the dis- 
graceful waste of memory which goes on in most school 



ftrring to the Cambridge man of forty years ago. *' The typical 
Cambridge man studies mathematics, not because he likes mathematics, 
or derives any pleasure from the perception of mathematical truth, still 
less with the notion of ever using his knowledge ; but either because, if 
he is " a good man," he hopes for a fellowship, or because, if he cannot 
aspire so high, he considers reading the thing to do, and finds a satis- 
faction in mental effort just as he does in a constitutional to the 
Gogmagogs. When such a student takes his degree, he is by no means 
a highly cultivated man ; but he is not the sort of man we can despise 
for all that. He has in him, to use one of his own metaphors, a con- 
siderable amount of force, which may be applied in any direction. He 
has great power of concentration and sustained mental eifort even on 
subjects which are distasteful to him. In other words, his mind is 
under the control of his will, and he can bring it to bear promptly and 
vigorously on anything put before him. He will sometimes be half 
through a piece of work, while an average Oxonian (as we Cambridge 
men conceive of him at least) is thinking about beginning. But his 
training has taught him to value mental force without teaching him to 
care about its application. Perhaps he has been working at the gym- 
nasium, and has at length succeeded in " putting up " a hundredweight. 
In learning to do this, he has been acquiring strength for its own sake. 
He does not want to put up hundredweights, but simply to be able to 
put them up, and his reward is the consciousness of power. Now the 
tripos is a kind of competitive examination in putting up weights. The 
student who has been training for it, has acquired considerable mental 
vigour, and when he has put up his weight he falls back on the con- 
sciousness of strength which he seldom thinks of using. Having put up 
the heavier, he despises the lighter weights. He rather prides himself 
on his ignorance of such things as history, modern languages, and 
English literature. He " can get those up in a few evenings," whenever 
he wants them. He reminds me, indeed, of a tradesman who has 
worked hard to have a large balance at his banker's. This done, he is 
satisfied. He has neither taste nor desire for the things which make 
wealth valuable j but when he sees other people in the enjoyment o{ 



432 JACOTOT. 

Waste of memory at school. 

rooms. Much is learnt which, for want of the necessary 
repetition, will soon be lost again, besides much that would 
be valueless if remembered. The thing to aim at is not 
giving "useful knowledge," but making the memory a store- 
house of such facts as are good material for the other powers 
of the mind to work with ; and that the facts may serve this 
purpose they must be such as the mind can thoroughly 
grasp and handle, and such as can be connected together. 
To instruct is instruere, " to put together in order, to build ;" 
it is not cramming the memory with facts without con- 
nexion, and, as Herbert Spencer calls them, unorganisable. 
And yet a great deal of our children's memory is wasted in 
storing facts of this kind, which can never form part of any 
organism. We do not teach them geography {earth know- 
kds^e, as the Germans call it), but the names of places. Our 
"history" is a similar, though disconnected study. We 
leave our children ignorant of the land, but insist on their 
getting up the " landmarks." And, perhaps, from a latent 
perception of the uselessness of such work, neither teachers 
nor scholars ever think of these things as learnt to be re- 
membered. They are indeed got up, as Schuppius says of 
the Logic of his day, in spem futures oblivionis. Latin 
grammar is gone through again and again, and a boy feels 
that the sooner he gets it into his head, the better it will 
be for him ; but who expects that the lists of geographical 
and historical names which are learnt one half-year, will be 
remembered the next ? I have seen it asserted, that when 
a boy leaves school, he has already forgotten nine-tenths of 
what he has been taught, and I dare say that estimate is 
quite within the mark. 

them, he hugs himself with the consciousness that he can write a cheque 
for such things whenever he pleases." 



JACOTOT. 433 

How to stop this waste. 

§ 17, By adopting the principles of Jacotot, we avoid 
a great deal of this waste. We give some thorough know- 
ledge, with which fresh knowledge may be connected. And 
it will then be found that perfect familiarity with a subject 
is something beyond the mere understanding it and being 
able, with difficulty, to reproduce what we have learned. 
By thus going over the same thing again and again, we 
acquire a thorough command over our knowledge ; and the 
feeling perfectly at home, even within narrow borders, gives 
a consciousness of strength. An old adage tells us that 
the Jack-of-all-trades is master of none ; but the master of 
one trade will have no difficulty in extending his insight 
and capacity beyond it. To use an illustration, which is 
of course an illustration merely, we should kindle knowledge 
in children, like fire in a grate. A stupid servant, with a 
small quantity of wood, spreads it over the whole grate. It 
blazes away, goes out, and is simply wasted. Another, who 
is wiser or more experienced, kindles the whole of the wood 
at one spot, and the fire, thus concentrated, extends in all 
directions. Similarly we should concentrate the beginnings 
of knowledge, and although we could not expect to make 
much show for a time, we might be sure that after a bit the 
fire would extend, almost of its own accord.* 

§ 18. From Joseph Payne I take Jacotot's directions for 
carrying out the rule, " II faut apprendre quelque chose, et 
y rapporter tout le reste." 

• On this interesting subject I will quote three men who said nothing 
inepte—Ti^ Morgan, Helps, and the first Sir James Stephen. De 
Moigan, speaking of Jacotot's plan, wrote : — " There is much truth in the 
assertion that new knowledge hooks on easily to a little of the old 
thoroughly mastered. The day is coming when it will be found out 
that crammed erudition got up for examination, does not cast out any 



434 JACOTOT. 

Multum, non multa. De Morgan. Helps. Stephen. 

I. Learn — i.e.^ learn so as to know thoroughly, perfectly, 
immovably {imperturbablement\ as well six months or twelve 

hooks for more." {Budget of Paradoxes, ^. '^•) Elsewhere he says :— 
"When the student has occupied his time in learning a moderate portion 
of many different things, what has he acquired — extensive knowledge or 
useful habits? Even if he can be said to have varied learning, it will 
not long be true of him, for nothing flies so quickly as half-digested 
knowledge ; and when this is gone, there remains but a slender portion 
of useful power. A small quantity of learning quickly evaporates from 
a mind which never held any learning except in small quantities ; and 
the intellectual philosopher can perhaps explain the following phenom- 
enon — that men who have given deep attention to one or more liberal 
studies, can learn to the end of their lives, and are able to retain and 
apply very small quantities of other kinds of knowledge ; while those 
who have never learnt much of any one thing seldom acquire new 
knowledge after they attain to years of maturity, and frequently lose the 
greater part of that which they once possessed." 

Sir Arthur Helps in Readittg [Friends t7t C.) says : — "All things are 
so connected together that a man who knows one subject well, cannot, 
if he would, have failed to have acquired much besides ; and that man 
will not be likely to keep fewer pearls who has a string to put them on 
than he who picks them up and throws them together without method. 
This, however, is a very poor metaphor to represent the matter ; for 
■what I would aim at producing not merely holds together what is 
gained, but has vitality in itself — is always growing. And anybody 
will confirm this who in his own case has had any branch of study or 
human affairs to work upon ; for he must have observed how all he 
meets seems to work in with, and assimilate itself to, his own peculiar 
subject. During his lonely walks, or in society, or in action, it seems 
as if this one pursuit were something almost independent of himself, 
always on the watch, and claiming its share in whatever is going on." 

In his Lecture on Desultory and Systematic Reading, Sir James 
Stephen said : — " Learning is a world, not a chaos. The various accu- 
mulations of human knowledge are not so many detached masses. 
They are all connected parts of one great system of truth, and though 
that system be infinitely too comprehensive for any one of us to compass. 



JACOTOT. 435 

J.'s plan for reading and writing. 

months hence, as now — something — something which fairly 
represents the subject to be acquired, which contains its 
essential characteristics. 2. Repeat that " something " in- 
cessantly (sans cesse), i.e., every day, or very frequently, from 
the beginning, without any omission, so that no part may 
be forgotten. 3. Reflect upon the matter thus acquired, 
so as, by degrees, to make it a possession of the mind as 
well as of the memory, so that, being appreciated as a 
whole, and appreciated in its minutest parts, what is as yet 
unknown, may be referred to it and interpreted by it. 4, 
Verifv, or test, general remarks, e.g., grammatical rules, 
&c., made by others, by comparing them with the facts {i.e., 
the words and phraseology) which you have learnt yourself. 

§ 19. In conclusion, I will give some account of the 
way in which reading, writing, and the mother-tongue were 
taught on the Jacototian system. 

The teacher takes a book, say Edgeworth's " Early Les- 
sons," points to the first word, and names it, " Frank." 
The child looks at the word and also pronounces it. Then 
the teacher does the same with the first two words, "Frank 
and "; then with the three first, " Frank and Robert," &c. 
When a line or so has been thus gone over, the teacher 
asks which word is Robert ? What word is that (pointing 
to one) ? " Find me the same word in this line " (pointing 
to another part of the book). When a sentence has been 
thus acquired, the words already known are analysed into 
syllables, and these syllables the child must pick out else- 
yet each component member of it bears to every other component membei 
relations which each of us may, in his own department of study, search 
out and discover for himself. A man is really and soundly learned in 
exact proportion to the number and to the importance of those relationa 
which he has thus carefully examined and accurately understood." 



436 JACOTOT. 

For the mother-tongue. 

where. Finally, the same thing is done with letters. When 
the child can read a sentence, that sentence is put before 
him written in small-hand, and the child is required to copy 
it. When he has copied the first word, he is led, by the 
questions of the teacher, to see how it differs from the 
original, and then he tries again. The pupil must always 
correct himself, guided only by questions. This sentence 
must be worked at till the pupil can write it pretty well from 
memory. He then tries it in larger characters. By carrying 
out this plan, the children's powers of observation and 
making comparisons are strengthened, and the arts of reading 
and writing are said to be very readily acquired. 

§ 20. For the mother-tongue, a model book is chosen 
and thoroughly learned. Suppose " Rasselas " is selected. 
" The pupil learns by heart a sentence, or a few sentences, 
and to-morrow adds a few more, still repeating from the 
beginning. The teacher, after two or three lessons of learn- 
ing and repeating, takes portions — any portion — of the 
matter, and submits it to the crucible of the pupil's mind : 
— Who was Rasselas? Who was his father? What is the 
father of waters? Where does it begin its course ? Where 
is Abyssinia ? Where is Egypt ? Where was Rasselas 
placed ? What sort of a person was Rasselas ? What is 
' credulity '? What are the ' whispers of fancy,' the * pro- 
mises of youth,' &:c., &c.?" 

A great variety of written exercises is soon joined with 
the learning by heart. Pieces must be written from memory, 
and the spelling, pointing, &c., corrected by the pupil him- 
self from the book. The same piece must be written again 
and again, till there are no more mistakes to correct. 
" This," said Joseph Payne, who had himself taught in this 
way, " is the best plan for spelling that has been devised." 



JACOTOT. 437 

Method of Investigation. 

Then the pupil may write an analysis, may define word?, 
distinguish between synonyms, explain metaphors, imitate 
descriptions, write imaginary dialogues or correspondence 
between the characters, &c. Besides these, a great variety 
of grammatical exercises may be given, and the force of 
prefixes and affixes may be found out by the pupils them- 
selves by collection and comparison. " The resources even 
of such a book as " Rasselas " will be found all but exhaust- 
less, while the training which the mind undergoes in the 
process of thoroughly mastering it, the acts of analysis, com- 
parison, induction, and deduction, performed so frequently 
as to become a sort of second nature, cannot but serve as 
an excellent preparation for the subsequent study of English 
literature " (Payne). 

§ 21. We see, from these instances, how Jacotot sought 
to imitate the method by which young children and self- 
taught men teach themselves. All such proceed from 
objects to definitions, from facts to reflections and theories, 
from examples to rules, from particular observations to 
general principles. They pursue, in fact, however uncon- 
sciously, the method of investigation^ the advantages of which 
are thus set out in a passage from Burke's treatise on the 
Sublime and Beautiful : — " I am convinced," says he, " that 
the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to 
the method of investigation is incomparably the best ; since, 
not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, 
it leads to the stock on which they grew ; it tends to set 
the reader [or learner] himself in the track of invention, and 
to direct him into those paths in which the author has made 
his own discoveries." "For Jacotot, I think the claim may, 
without presumption, be maintained that he has, beyond 
all other teachers, succeeded in co-ordinating the method 



438 JACOTOT. 

Jacotot's last days. 

of elementary teaching with the method of investigation " 
(Payne). 

§ 2 2. The latter part of his life, which did not end till 
1840, Jacotot spent in his native country — first at Valen- 
ciennes, and then at Paris. To the last he laboured inde- 
fatigably, and with a noble disinterestedness, for what he 
believed to be the " intellectual emancipation " of his fellow- 
creatures. For a time, his system made great way in 
France, but we now hear little of it. Jacotot has, however, 
lately found an advocate in M. Bernard Perez, who has written 
a book about him and also a very good article in Buisson's 
Dictionnaire, 



XIX. 
HERBERT SPENCER.* 



§ I. I ONCE heard it said by a teacher of great ability 
that no one without practical acquaintance with the subject 
could write anything worth reading on Education. My own 
opinion differs very widely from this. I am not, indeed, 
prepared to agree with another authority, much given to 
paradox, that the actual work of education unfits a man for 
forming enlightened views about it, but I think that the 
outsider, coming fresh to the subject, and unencumbered by 
tradition and prejudice, may hit upon truths which the 
teacher, whose attention is too much engrossed with 
practical difficulties, would fail to perceive without assist- 
ance, and that, consequently, the theories of intelligent men, 
unconnected with the work of education, deserve our 
careful, and, if possible, our impartial consideration. 

§ 2. One of the most important works of this kind 
which has lately appeared, is the treatise of Mr. Herbert 
Spencer. So eminent a writer has every claim to be listened 
to with respect, and in this book he speaks with more than 
his individual authority. The views he has very vigorously 

* This essay, which was written nearly twenty-five years ago, I 
leave as it stands. I take some credit to myself for having early recog- 
nised the importance of a book now famous. (June, 1890.) 



440 HERBERT SPENCER. 

Same knowledge for discipline and use ? 

propounded are shared by a number of distinguished 
scientific men ; and not a few of the unscientific believe 
that in them is shadowed forth the education of the future. 

§ 3. It is perhaps to be regretted that Mr. Spencer has 
not kept the tone of one who investigates the truth in a 
subject of great difficulty, but lays about him right and 
left, after the manner of a spirited controversialist. This, 
no doubt, makes his book much more entertaining reading 
than such treatises usually are, but, on the other hand, it 
has the disadvantage of arousing the antagonisio of those 
whom he would most wish to influence. Whea the man 
who has no practical acquaintance with education, lays 
down the law ex caihedrd, garnished with sarcasms at all 
that is now going on, the schoolmaster, offended by the 
assumed tone of authority, sets himself to show where these 
theories would not work, instead of examining what basis of 
truth there is in them, and how far they should influence his 
own practice. 

I shall proceed to examine Mr. Spencer's proposals with 
all the impartiality I 'am master of. 

§ 4. The great question, whether the teachmg which gives 
the most valuable knowledge is the same as that which best 
disciplines the faculties of the mind, Mr. Spencer dismisses 
briefly. "It would be utterly contrary to the beautiful 
economy of nature," he says, " if one kind of culture were 
needed for the gaining of information, and another kind 
were needed as a mental gymnastic* But it seems to nic 
that different subjects must be used to train the faculties at 
different stages of development. The processes of science, 

• This proposition has been ably discussed by President W. II. 
Payne. Contributions to the Science of Education. " Education 
Values." 



HERBERT SPENCER. 44 1 

Different stages, different knowledges. 

which form the staple of education in Mr. Spencer's system 
cannot be grasped by the intellect of a child. " The 
scientific discoverer does the work, and when it is done the 
schoolboy is called in to witness the result, to learn its 
chief features by heart, and to repeat them when called 
upon, just as he is called on to name the mothers of the 
patriarchs, or to give an account of the Eastern campaigns 
of Alexander the Great."— (Pa// Mall G.). This, however, 
affords but scanty training for the mind. We want to draw 
out the child's interests, and to direct them to worthy objects. 
We want not only to teach him, but to enable and encourage 
him to teach himself; and, if following Mr. Spencer's advice, 
we make him get up the species of plants, " which amount to 
some 320,000," and the varied forms of animal life, which 
are "estimated at some 2,000,0000," we may, as Mr. Spencer 
tells us, have strengthened his memory as effectually as by 
teaching him languages ; but the pupil will, perhaps have no 
great reason to rejoice over his escape from the horrors of 
the "As in Prcesenti," and "Propria quae Maribus." The 
consequences will be the same in both cases. We shall 
disgust the great majority of our scholars with the acquisitiqji 
of knowledge, and with the use of the powers of their mind. 
Whether, therefore, we adopt or reject Mr. Spencer's con- 
clusion, that there is one sort of knowledge which is 
universally the most valuable, I think we must deny that 
Ihere is one sort of knowledge which is universally and at 
every stage in education, the best adapted to develop the 
intellectual faculties. Mr. Spencer himself acknowledges this 
elsewhere. " There is," says he, " a certain sequence in which 
the faculties spontaneously develop, and a certain kind of 
knowledge, which each requires during its development. It is 
for us to ascertain this sequence, and supply this knowledge. 



442 HERBERT SPENCER. 

Relative value of knowledges. 

§ 5. Mr. Spencer discusses more fully "the relative value 
of knowledges," and this is a subject which has hitherto not 
met with the attention it deserves, It is not sufficie'Jt for 
us to prove of any subject taught in our schools that the 
knowledge or the learning of it is valuable. AVe must also 
show that the knowledge or the learning of it is of at least 
as great value as that of anything else that might be taught 
in the same time. " Had we time to master all subjects we 
need not be particular. To quote the old song — 

Could a man be secure 

That his Hfe would endure, 

As of old, for a thousand long years, 

What things he might know I 

What deeds he might do I 

And all without hurry or care 1 

But wc that have but span-long lives must ever bear in mind 
our limited time for acquisition." 

§ 6. To test the value of the learning imparted in edu- 
cation we must look to the end of education. This Mr. 
Spencer defines as follows : " To prepare us for complete 
living is the function which education has to discharge, and 
the only rational mode of judging of an educational course 
is to judge in what degree it discharges such function." 
For complete living we must know " in what way to treat the 
body ; in what way to treat the mind ; in what way to 
manage our affairs ; in what way to bring up a family ; in 
what way to behave as a citizen ; in what way to utilise 
those sources of happiness which nature supplies — how to 
use all our faculties to the greatest advantage of ourselves 
and others." There are a number of sciences, says Mr. 
Spencer, which throw light on these subjects. It should, 
therefore, be the business of education to impart these sciences. 



HERBERT SPENCER, 443 

Knowledge for self-preservation. 

But if there were (which is far from being the case) a 
well-defined and well-established science in each cf these 
departments, those sciences would not be understandable by 
children, nor would any individual have time to master the 
whole of them, or even "a due proportion of each." The 
utmost that could be attempted would be to give young 
people some knowledge of the results of such sciences and 
the rules derived from them. But to this Mr. Spencer 
would object that it would tend, hke the learning of 
languages, "to increase the already undue respect for 
authority." 

§ 7. To consider Mr. Spencer's divisions in detail, we 
come first to knowledge that leads to self-preservation. 

" Happily, that all-important part of education which goes 
to secure direct self-preservation is, in part, already provided 
for. Too momentous to be left to our blundering. Nature 
takes it into her own hands." But Mr. Spencer warns us 
against such thwartings of Nature as that by which " stupid 
schoolmistresses commonly prevent the girls in their charge 
from the spontaneous physical activities they would indulge 
in, and so render them comparatively incapable of taking 
care of themselves in circumstances of peril." 

§ 8. Indirect self-preservation, Mr. Spencer believes, 
may be much assisted by a knowledge of physiology. 
"Diseases are often contracted, our members are often 
injured, by causes which superior knowledge would avoid." 
I believe these are not the only grounds on which the 
advocates of physiology urge its claim to be admitted into 
the curriculum \ but these, if they can be established, are 
no doubt very important. Is it true, however, that doctors 
preserve their own life and health or that of their children 
by their knowledge of physiology ? I think the matter is 



444 HERBERT SPENCER. 

Useful knowledge v. the classics. 

open to dispute. Mr. Spencer does not. He says very 
truly that many a man would blush if convicted of ignorance 
about the pronunciation of Iphigenia, or about the labours 
of Hercules who, nevertheless, would not scruple to acknow- 
ledge that he had never heard of the Eustachian tubes, aiid 
could not tell the normal rate of pulsation. " So terribly," 
adds Mr. Spencer, *' in our education does the ornamental 
override the useful !" But this is begging the question. At 
present classics form part of the instruction given to every 
gentleman, and physiology does not. This is the simpler 
form of Mr. Spencer's assertion about the labours of Hercules 
and the Eustachian tubes, and no one denies it. But we 
are not so well agreed on the comparative value of these 
subjects. In his Address at St. Andrews, J. S. Mill showed 
that he at least was not convinced of the uselessness of 
classics, and Mr. Spencer does not tell us how the know- 
ledge of the normal state of pulsation is useful ; how, to use 
his own test, it "influences action." However, whether we 
admit the claims of physiology or not, we shall probably 
allow that there are certain physiological facts and rules of 
health, the knowledge of which would be of great practical 
value, and should therefore be imparted to everyone. 
Here the doctor should come to the schoolmaster's assist- 
ance, and give him a manual from which to teach them. 

§ 9. Next in order of importance, according to Mr. Spen- 
cer, comes the knowledge which aids indirect self-preservation 
by facilitating the gaining of a livelihood. Here Mr. Spencer 
thinks it necessary to prove to us that such sciences as 
mathematics and physics and biology underlie all the 
practical arts and business of life. No one would think of 
joining issue with him on this point ; but the question still 
remains, what influence should this have on education? 



HERBERT SPENCER. 445 

Special instruction v. education. 

"Teach science," says Mr. Spencer. *'A grounding in 
science is of great importance, botli because it prepares for 
all this [business of life], and because rational knowledge 
has an immense superiority over empirical knowledge." 
Should we teach all sciences to everybody ? This is clearly 
impossible. Should we, then, decide for each child what 
is to be his particular means of money-getting, and instruct 
him in those sciences which will be most useful in that 
business or profession ? In other words, should we have 
a separate school for each calling ? The only attempt of 
this kind which has been made is, I believe, the institution 
of Handelschulen (commercial schools) in Germany. In 
them, youths of fifteen or sixteen enter for a course of two 
or three years' instruction which aims exclusively at fitting 
them for commerce. But, in this case, their general edu- 
cation is already finished, With us, the lad commonly goes 
to work at the business itself quite as soon as he has the 
faculties for learning the sciences connected with it. If the 
school sends him to it with a love of knowledge, and with 
a mind well disciplined to acquire knowledge, this will be 
of more value to him than any special information. 

§ lo. As Mr. Spencer is here considering science merely 
with reference to its importance in earning a livelihood, it 
is not beside the question to remark, that in a great number 
of instances, the knowledge of the science which underlies 
an operation confers no practical ability whatever. No one 
sees the better for understanding the structure of the eye 
and the undulatory theory of light. In swimming or 
rowing, a senior wrangler has no advantage over a man 
who is entirely ignorant about the laws of fluid pressure. 
As far as money-getting is concerned then, science will not 
be found to be universally serviceable. Mr. Spencer gives 



446 HERBERT SPENCER. 

Scientific knowledge and money-making:. 

instances indeed, where science would prevent very 
expensive blundering; but the true inference is, not that 
the blunderers should learn science, but that they should 
mind their own business, and take the opinion of scien- 
tific men about theirs. "Here is a mine," says he, "in 
the sinking of which many shareholders ruined them- 
selves, from not knowing that a certain fossil belonged to 
the old red sandstone, below which no coal is found." 
Perhaps they were misled by the little knowledge which 
Pope tells us is a dangerous thing. If they had been 
entirely ignorant, they would surely have called in a pro- 
fessional geologist, whose opinion would have been more 
valuable than their own, even though geology had taken the 
place of classics in their schooling. " Daily are men induced 
to aid in carrying out inventions which a mere tyro in 
science could show to be futile." But these are men whose 
function it would always be to lose money, not make it, 
whatever you might teach them.* I have great doubt, 
therefore, whether the learning of sciences will ever be found 
a ready way of making a fortune. But directly we get 
beyond the region of pounds, shillings, and pence, I agree 
most cordially with Mr. Spencer that a rational knowledge 
has an immense superiority over empirical knowledge. 
And, as a part of their education, boys should be tauglit to 
distinguiih the one from the other, and to desire rational 
knowledge. Much might be done in this way by teaching, 
not all the sciences and nothing else, but the main principles 
of some one science, which would enable the more intelli- 
gent boys to understand and appreciate the value of "a 
rational explanation of phenomena." I believe this addi- 

* " The brewer," as Mr. Spencer himself tells us, " if his business is 
very extensive, finds it pay to keep a chemist on the premises " — pay a 
good deal better, I suspect, than learning chemistry at school. 



HERBERT SPENCER. 447 

Knowledge about rearing offspring. 

tion to what was before a literary education has already been 
made in some of our leading schools, as Harrow, Rugby, 
and the City of London.* 

§ II. Next, Mr. Spencer would have instruction in the 
proper way of rearing offspring form a part of his curriculum. 
There can be no question of the importance of this know- 
ledge, and all that Mr. Spencer says of the lamentable 
ignorance of parents is, unfortunately, no less undeniable. 
But could this knowledge be imparted early in life ? Young 
people would naturally take but little interest in it. It is 
by parents, or at least by those who have some notion of 
the parental responsibility, that this knowledge should be 
sought. The best way in which we can teach the young 
will be so to bring them up that when they themselves have 
to rear children the remembrance of their own youth may 
be a guide and not a beacon to them. But more knowledge 
than this is necessary, and I differ from Mr. Spencer only as 
to the proper time for acquiring it. 

§ 12. Next comes the knowledge which fits a man for 
the discharge of his functions as a citizen, a subject to which 
Dr. Arnold attached great importance at the time of the 
first Reform Bill, and which deserves our attention all the 

* Helps, who by taste and talent is eminently literary, put in this 
claim for science more than 20 [now nearer 50] years ago. "The 
higher branches of method cannot be taught at first ; but you may begin 
by teaching orderliness of mind. Collecting, classifying, contrasting, 
and weighing facts are some of the processes by which method is taught. 
. . . Scientific method may be acquired without many sciences being 
learnt ; but one or two great branches of science must be accurately 
known." {^Friends in Council, Education.) Helps, though by his 
delightful style he never gives the reader any notion of over compression, 
has told us more truth about education in a few pages than one some- 
times meets with in a complete treatise. 



448 HERBERT SPENCER. 

Knowledge of history : its nature and use. 

more in consequence of the second and third. But what 
knowledge are we to give for this purpose ? One of the 
subjects which seem especially suitable is history. But 
history, as it is now written, is, according to Mr. Spencer, 
useless. "It does not illustrate the right principles of 
political action." " The great mass of historical facts are 
facts from which no conclusions can be drawn — unorganis- 
able facts, and, therefore, facts of no service in establishing 
principles of conduct, which is the chief use of facts. Read 
them if you like for amusement, but do not flatter yourself 
they are instructive." About the right principles of political 
action we seem so completely at sea that, perhaps, the main 
thing we can do for the young is to point out to them the 
responsibihties which will hereafter devolve upon them, and 
the danger, both to the state and the individual, of just 
echoing the popular cry without the least reflection, 
according to our present usage. But history, as it is now 
written by great historians, may be of some use in training 
the young both to be citizens and men. " Reading about 
the fifteen decisive battles, or all the battles in history, 
would not make a man a more judicious voter at the next 
election," says Mr. Spencer. But is this true ? The know- 
ledge of what has been done in other times, even by those 
whose coronation renders them so distasteful to Mr. Spencer, 
is knowledge which influences a man's whole character, and 
may, therefore, affect particular acts, even when we are 
unable to trace the connexion. As it has been often said, 
the effect of reading history is, in some respects, the same 
as that of travelling. Anyone in Mr. Spencer's vein might 
ask, "If a man has seen the Alps, of what use will that be 
to him in weighing out groceries?" Directly, none at all j 
but indirectly, much. The travelled man will not be such 



HERBERT SPENCER. 449 

Use of history. 

a slave to the petty views and customs of his trade as the 
man who looks on his county town as the centre of the 
universe, The study of history, like travelling, widens the 
Student's mental vision, frees him to some extent from the 
bondage of the present, and prevents his mistaking conven- 
tionalities for laws of nature. It brings home to him, in 
all its force, the truth that " there are also people beyond 
the mountain " {Hinter dem Berge sind aiich Leute), that 
there are higher interests in the world than his own business 
concerns, and nobler men than himself or the best of his 
acquaintance. It teaches him what men are capable of, 
and thus gives him juster views of his race. And to have 
all this truth worked into the mind contributes perhaps as 
largely to " complete living " as knowledge of the Eustachian 
tubes or of the normal rate of pulsation.* I think, therefore, 
that the works of great historians and biographers, which we 
already possess, may be usefully employed in education. 
It is difficult to estimate the value of history according to 
Mr. Spencer's idea, as it has yet to be written ; but I 
venture to predict that if boys, instead of reading about 
the history of nations in connection with their leading men, 
are required to study only " the progress of society," the 
subject will at once lose all its interest for them ; and. 



* J. S. Mill (who by the way, would leave history entirely to private 
reading. Address at St. Andrews, p. 21), has pointed out that " there is 
not a fact in history which is not susceptible of as many different ex- 
planations as there are possible theories of human affairs," and that 
" history is not the foundation but the verification of the social science." 
But he admits that " what we know of former ages, like what we know 
of foreign nations, is, with all its imperfectness, of much use, by correct- 
ing the narrowness incident to personal experience." (Dissertations, 
Vol. I, p. IJ2.) 

KE 



450 HERBERT SPENCER. 

Employment of leisure hours. 

perhaps, many of the facts communicated will prove, after 
all, no less unorganisable than the fifteen decisive battles. 

§ 13. Lastly, we come to that "remaining division of 
iiuraan life which includes the relaxations and amusements 
filling leisure hours." Mr. Spencer assures us that he will 
yield to none in the value he attaches to aesthetic culture 
and its pleasures ; but if he does not value the fine arts 
less, he values science more ; and painting, music, and 
poetry would receive as little encouragement under his 
dictatorship as in the days of the Commonwealth. "As 
the fine arts and belles-lettres occupy the leisure part of 
life, so should they occupy the leisure part of education." 
This language is rather obscure ; but the only meaning I 
can attach to it is, that music, drawing, poetry, &:c., may 
be taught if time can be found when all other knowledges 
are provided for. This reminds me of the author whose 
works are so valuable that they will be studied when Shaks- 
peare is forgotten — but not before. Anyone of the sciences 
which Mr. Spencer considers so necessary might employ a 
lifetime. Where then shall we look for the leisure part of 
education when education includes them all?* 

* It is difficult to treat seriously the arguments by which Mr. Spercer 
endeavours to show that a knowledge of science is necessary for the 
practice or the enjoyment of the fine arts. Of course, the highest art \.i 
every kind is based on science, that is, on truths which science takes 
cognizance of and explains ; but it does not therefore follow that " with- 
out science there can be neither perfect production nor full appreciation." 
Mr. Spencer tells us of mistakes which John Lewis and Rossetti ha\e 
made for want of science. Very likely ; and had those gentlemen de- 
roted much ot their time to science we should never have heard of their 
blunders — or of their pictures either. If they were to paint a piece of 
woodwork, a carpenter might, perhaps, detect something amiss in the 
mitring. If they painted a wall, a bricklayer might point out that with 



HERBERT SPENCER. 45 I 

Poetry and the Arts. 

§ 14. But, if adopting Mr. Spencer's own measure, we 
estimate the value of knowledge by its influence on action, 
we shall probably rank " accomplishments " much higher 
than they have hitherto been placed in the schemes of 
educationists. Knowledge and skill connected with the 
business of life, are of necessity acquired in the discharge 
of business. But the knowledge and skill which make our 
leisure valuable to ourselves and a source of pleasure to 
others, can seldom be gained after the work of life has 
begun. And yet every day a man may benefit by possess- 
ing such an ability, or may suffer from the want of it 
One whose eyesight has been trained by drawing and 
painting finds objects of interest all around him, to which 

their arrangement of stretchers and headers the wall would tumble down 
for want of a proper bond. But even Mr. Spencer would not wish 
them to spend their time in mastering the technicalities of every handi- 
craft, in order to avoid these inaccuracies. It is the business of the 
painter to give us form and colour as they reveal themselves to the eye, 
not to prepare illustrations of scientific text-books. The physical 
sciences, however, are only part of the painter's necessary equipment, 
according to Mr. Spencer. " He must also understand how the minds 
of spectators will be affected by the several peculiarities of his work — a 
question in psychology !" Still more surprising is Mr. Spencer's dictura 
about poetry. " Its rhythm,^ its strong and numerous metaphors, its 
hyperboles, its violent inversions, are simply exaggerations of the traits 
of excited speech. To be good, therefore, poetry must pay attention to 
those laws of nervous action which excited speech obeys." It is difficult 
to see how poetry can pay attention to anything. The poet, of course 
must not violate those laws, but, if he has paid attention to them in 
composing, he will do well to present his MS. to the local newspaper. 
[It seems the class is not extinct of whom Pope wrote : — 
"Some drily plain, without invention's aid 
" Write dull receipts how poems may be made." 

Essay 07i Criticism^ 



452 HERBERT SPENCER. 

More than science needed for complete living. 

other people are blind. A primrose by a river's brim is, 
perhaps, more to him who has a feeling for its form and 
colour than even to the scientific student, who can tell all 
about its classification and component parts. A knowledge 
of music is often of the greatest practical service, as by 
virtue of it, its possessor is valuable to his associates, to 
say nothing of his having a constant source of pleasure 
and a means of recreation which is most precious as a relief 
from the cares of hfe. Of far greater importance is the 
knowledge of our best poetry. One of the first reforms 
in our school course would have been, I should have 
thought, to give this knowledge a much more prominent 
place; but Mr. Spencer consigns it, with music and drawing, 
to " the leisure part of education." Whether a man who 
was engrossed by science, who had no knowledge of the 
fine arts except as they illustrated scientific laws, no 
acquaintance with the lives of great men, or with any his- 
tory but sociology, and who studied the thoughts and 
emotions expressed by our great poets merely with a view 
to their pyschological classification — whether such a man 
could be said to "live completely" is a question to which 
every one, not excepting Mr. Spencer himself, would pro- 
bably return the same answer. And yet this is the kind of 
man which Mr. Spencer's system would produce where it 
was most successful. 

§ 15. Let me now briedy sum up the conclusions arrived 
at, and consider how far I differ from Mr. Spencer. I 
believe that there is no one study which is suited to train 
the faculties of the mind at every stage of its development, 
and that when we have decided on the necessity of this or 
that knowledge, we must consider further what is the right 
time for acquiring it. I believe that intellectual education 



HERBERT SPENCER, 453 

Objections to H. S.'s curriculum. 

should aim, not so much at communicating facts, however 
valuable, as at showing the boy what true knowledge is, 
and giving him the power and the disposition to acquire it. 
I believe that the exclusively scientific teaching which Mr. 
Spencer approves would not effect this. It would lead at 
best to a very one-sided development of the mind. It 
might fail to engage the pupil's interest sufficiently to draw 
out his faculties, and in this case the net outcome of his 
school-days would be no larger than at present. Of the 
knowledges which Mr. Spencer recommends for special 
objects, some, I think, would not conduce to the object, and 
some could not be communicated early in life, (i.) For 
indirect self-preservation we do not require to know phy- 
siology, but the results of physiology. (2.) The science 
which bears on special pursuits in life has not, in many 
cases, any pecuniary value, and although it is most desirable 
that every one should study the science which makes his 
work intelligible to him, this must usually be done when 
his schooling is over. The school will have done its part 
if it has accustomed him to the intellectual processes by 
which sciences are learned, and has given him an intelligent 
appreciation of their value.* (3.) The right way of rearing 
and training children should be studied, but not by the 
children themselves. (4.) The knowledge which fits a man 



* Speaking of law, medicine, engineering, and the industrial arts, T. 
S. Mill remarks : "Whether those whose speciality they are will learn 
them as.a branch of intelligence or as a mere trade, and whether having 
learnt them, they will make a wise and conscientious use of them, or 
the reverse, depends less on the manner in which they are taught their 
profession, than upon what tort of viind they bring to it — what kind oj 
intelligence and of conscience the general system of education has deve- 
loped in them.'' — Address at St. Andrews, p. 6 



454 HERBERT SPENCER, 

Citizen's duties. Things not to teach. 

to discharge his duties as a citizen is of great importance, 
and, as Dr. Arnold pointed out, is Ukely to be entirely 
neglected by those Avho have to struggle for a livelihood. 
The schoolmaster should, therefore, by no means neglect 
this subject with those of his pupils whose school-days will 
soon be over, but, probably, all that he can do is to cultivate 
in them a sense of the citizen's duty, and a capacity for 
being their own teachers. (5.) The knowledge of poetry, 
belles-lettres, and the fine arts, which Mr. Spencer hands 
over to the leisure part of education, is the only knowledge 
in his program which I think should most certainly form 
a prominent part in the curriculum of every school. 

§ 16. I therefore differ, though with great respect, from 
the conclusions at which Mr. Spencer has arrived. But I 
heartily agree with him that we are bound to inquire into 
the relative value of knowledges, and if we take, as I should 
willingly do, Mr. Spencer's test, and ask how does this or 
that knowledge influence action (including in our inquiry 
its influence on mind and character, through which it bears 
upon action), I think we should banish from our schools 
much that has hitherto been taught in them, besides those 
old tormentors of youth (laid, I fancy, at last — requiescant 
in pace) — the Propria qucE Alaribus and its kindred ab- 
surdities. What we should teach is, of course, not so easily 
decided as what we should not. 

§ 17. I now come to consider Mr. Spencer's second 
chapter, in which, under the heading of " Intellectual Edu- 
cation," he gives an admirable summing up of the main 
principles in which the great writers on the subject have 
agreed, from Comenius downwards. These principles are, 
perhaps, not all of them unassailable, and even where they 
arc true, many mistakes must be expected before we arrive 



HERBERT SPENCER. 455 

Need of a science of education. 

at the best method of applying them ; but the only reason 
that can be assigned for the small amount of influence they 
have hitherto exercised is, that most teachers are as ignorant 
of them as of the abstrusest doctrines of Kant and Hegel. 

§ 1 8. Instating these principles Mr. Spencer points out 
that they merely form a commencement for a science of 
education. " Before educational methods can be made to 
harmonise in character and arrangement with the faculties 
in the mode and order of unfolding, it is first needful that 
we ascertain with some completeness how the faculties do 
unfold. At present we have acquired on this point only a 
few general notions. These general notions must be de- 
veloped in detail — must be transformed into a multitude of 
specific propositions before we can be said to possess that 
science on which the art of education must be based. And 
then, when we have definitely made out in what succession 
and in what combinations the mental powers become active, 
it remains to choose out of the many possible ways of 
exercising each of them, that which best conforms to its 
natural mode of action. Evidently, therefore, it is not to 
be supposed that even our most advanced modes of teaching 
are the right ones, or nearly the right ones." It is not 
to be wondered at that we have no science of education. 
Those who have been able to observe the phenomena have 
had no interest in generalising from them. Up to the 
present time the schoolmaster has been a person to whom 
boys were sent to learn Latin and Greek. He has had, 
therefore, no more need of a science than the dancing- 
master.* But the present century, which has brought in so 

* Comme vous n'avez pas su ou comme vous n'avez pas voulu 
atteindre la pensee de I'enfant, vous n'avez aucune action sur son de- 



456 HERBERT SPENCER. 

Hope of a science. 

many changes, will not leave the state of education as it 
found it Latin and Greek, if they are not dethroned in 
our higher schools, will have their despotism changed for 
a very limited monarchy. A course of instruction certainly 
without Greek and perhaps without Latin will have to be 
provided for middle schools. Juster views are beginning 
to prevail of the schoolmaster's function. It is at length 
perceived that he has to assist the development of the 
human mind, and perhaps, by-and-bye, he may think it as 
well to learn all he can of that which he is employed in 
developing. When matters have advanced as far as this, 
we may begin to hope for a science of education. In 
Locke's day he could say of physical science that there was 
no such science in existence. For thousands of years the 
human race had lived in ignorance of the simplest laws of 
the world it inhabited. But the true method of inquiring 
once introduced, science has made such rapid conquests, 
and acquired so great importance, that some of our ablest 
men seem inclined to deny, if not the existence, at least 
the value, of any other kind of knowledge. So, too, when 
teachers seek by actual observation to discover the laws of 
mental development, a science may be arrived at, which, in 
its influence on mankind, would perhaps rank before any 
we now possess. 

§ 19. Those who have read the previous Essays will 
have seen in various forms most of the principles which Mr. 
Spencer enumerates, but I gladly avail myself of his assist- 
ance in summing them up. 

I. We should proceed from the simple to the complex, 

veloppement moral et intellectuel. Vous etes le mallre de latin et de 
grec." Breal. Quelques Mots, ^'c, p. 243. 



HERBERT SPENCER. 457 

From simple to complex: known to unknown. 

both in our choice of subjects and in the way in which each 
subject is taught. We should begin with but few subjects 
at once, and, successively adding to these, should finally 
carry on all subjects abreast. 

Each larger concept is made by a combination of smaller 
ones, and presupposes them. If this order is not attended 
to in communicating knowledge, the pupil can learn nothing 
but words, and will speedily sink into apathy and disgust. 

§ 20. That we must proceed from the known to the un 
known is something more than a corollary to the above ;* 
because not only are new concepts formed by the combina- 
tion of old, but the mind has a liking for what it knows, and 
this liking extends itself to all that can be connected with 
its object. The principle of using the known in teaching 
the unknown is so simple, that all teachers who really 
endeavour to make anything understood, naturally adopt 
it. The traveller who is describing what he has seen and 
what we have not seen tells us that it is in one particular 
like this object, and in another like that object, with which 
we are already familiar. We combine these different 
concepts we possess, and so get some notion of things about 
which we were previously ignorant. What is required in our 
teaching is that the use of the know nshould be employed 
more systematically. Most teachers think of boys who 
have no school learning as entirely ignorant. The least 
reflection shows, however, that they know already much 
more than schools can ever teach them, A sarcastic 
examiner is said to have handed a small piece of paper to a 
student and told him to write all he knew on it. Perhaps 

* Mr. Spencer does not mention tliis principle in his enumeration, 
but, -10 doubt, considers he implies it. 



458 HERBERT SPENCER. 

Connecting schoolwork with life outside. 

many boys would have no difficulty in stating the sum of 
their school-learning within very narrow limits, but with 
other knowledge a child of five years old, could he write, 
might soon fill a volume.* Our aim should be to connect 
the knowledge boys bring with them to the schoolroom with 
that which they are to acquire there.f I suppose all will 
allow, whether they think it a matter of regret or otherwise, 
that hardly anything of the kind has hitherto been attempted. 
Against this state of things I cannot refrain from borrowing 
Mr. Spencer's eloquent protest. " Not recognising the 
truth that the function of books is supplementary — that they 
form an indirect means to knowledge when direct means 
fail, a means of seeing through other men what you cannot 
see for yourself, teachers afe eager to give second-hand facts 
in place of first-hand facts. Not perceiving the enormous 
value of that spontaneous education which goes on in early 
years, not perceiving that a child's restless observation, 
instead of being ignored or checked, should be diligently 
ministered to, and made as accurate and complete as possi- 
ble, they insist on occupying its eyes and thoughts with 
things that are, for the time being, incomprehensible and 
repugnant. Possessed by a superstition which worships the 

* "Si Ton partageait toute la science humaine en deux parties, I'une 
commune k tous les hommes, I'autie particuliere aux savants, celle-ci 
serait tres-petite en comparaison de I'autre. Mais nous ne songeons 
guere aux acquisitions generales, parce qu'elles se font sans qu'on y 
pense, et meme avant I'age de raison ; que d'aiileurs le savoir ne se fait 
leniarquer que par ses differences, et que, comme dans les equations 
d'algebre, les quantites communes se comptent pour rien." — Umile, 
livre i. 

t This is well said in Dr. John Brown's admirable paper Education 
through the Senses. (Ilorae SubsecivK, pp. 313, 314.) 



HERBERT SPENCER, 459 

Books and life. 

symbols of knowledge instead of the knowledge itself, they 
do not see that only when his acquaintance with the objects 
nnd processes of the household, the street, and the fields, 
is becoming tolerably exhaustive, only then should a child 
be introduced to the new sources of information which 
books' supply, and this not only because immediate cogni- 
tion is of far greater value than mediate cognition, but also 
because the words contained in books can be rightly inter- 
preted into ideas only in proportion to the antecedent 
experience of things."* While agreeing heartily in the spirit 
of this protest, I doubt whether we should wait till the 
child's acquaintance with the objects and processes of the 
household, the streets, and the fields, is becoming tolerably 
exhaustive before we give hira instruction from books. The 
point of time which Mr. Spencer indicates is, at all events, 
rather hard to fix, and I should wish to connect book-learn- 
ing as soon as possible with the learning that is being 
acquired in other ways. Thus might both the books, and 
the acts and objects of daily life, win an additional interest. 
If, e.g., the first reading-books were about the animals, and 
later on about the trees and flowers which the children con 
stantly meet with, and their attention was kept up by large 
coloured pictures, to which the text might refer, the children 



* After remarking on the wrong order in which subjects are taught, 
he continues, "What with perceptions unnaturally dulled by early 
thwartings, and a coerced attention to books, what with the mental con- 
fusion pioduced by teaching subjects before they can be understood, and 
in each of them giving generalisations before the facts of which they are 
the generalisations, what with making the pupil a mere passive recipient 
of others' ideas and not in the least leading him to be an active inquirer 
or self-instructor, and what with taxing the faculties to excess, there are 
very few minds that become as efficient as they might be." 



460 HERBERT SPENCER. 

Mistakes in grammar teaching. 

would soon find both pleasure and advantage in reading, 
and they would look at the animals and trees with a keener 
interest from the additional knowledge of them they had 
derived from books. This is, of course, only one small 
application of a very influential principle. 

§ 21. One marvellous instance of the neglect of this prin- 
ciple is found in the practice of teaching Latin grammar 
before English grammar. As Professor Seeley has so well 
pointed out, children bring with them to school the know- 
ledge of language in its concrete form. They may soon be 
taught to observe the language they already know, and to 
find, almost for themselves, some of the main divisions of 
words in it. But, instead of availing himself of the child's 
previous knowledge, the schoolmaster takes a new and 
difficult language, differing as much as possible from English, 
a new and difficult science, that of grammar, conveyed, too, 
in a new and difficult terminology, and all this he tries to 
leach at the same time. The consequence is that the 
science is destroyed, the terminology is either misunderstood, 
or, more probably, associated with no ideas, and even the 
language for which every sacrifice is made, is found, in nine 
cases out of ten, never to be acquired at all.* 

* A class of boys whom I once took in Latin Delectus denied, with 
the utmost confidence, when I questioned them on the subject, that there 
were any such things in English as verbs and substantives. On another 
occasion, I saw a poor boy of nine or ten caned, because, when he had 
said that proficiscor was a deponent verb, he could not say what a depo- 
nent verb was. Even if he had remembered *he inaccurate grammar 
definition expected of him, " A deponent verb is a verb with a passive 
form and an active meaning," his comprehension of proficiscor would 
have been no greater. It is worth observing that, even when offending 
grievously in great matters against the principle of connecting fresh 
knowledge with the old, teachers are sometimes driven to it in small 



HERBERT SPENCER. 46 1 

From indefinite to definite : concrete to abstract. 

§ 22. 2. "All development is an advance from the 
indefinite to the definite." I do not feel very certain of the 
truth of this principle, or of its application, if true. Of 
course, a child's intellectual conceptions are at first vague, 
and we should not forget this ; but it is rather a fact than a 
principle. 

§ 23. 3. " Our lessons ought to start from the concrete, 
and end in the abstract." What Mr, Spencer says under 
this head well deserves the attention of all teachers. 
" General formulas which men have devised to express 
groups of details, and which have severally simplified their 
conceptions by uniting many facts into one fact, they have 
supposed must simplify the conceptions of a child also. 
They have forgotten that a generalisation is simple only in 
comparison with the whole mass of particular truths it com- 
prehends ; that it is more complex than any one of these 
truths taken simply ; that only, after many of these single 
truths have been acquired, does the generalisation ease the 
memory and help the reason ; and that, to a mind not 
possessing these single truths, it is necessarily a mystery. 
Thus, confounding two kinds of simpUfication, teachers have 
constantly erred by setting out with "first principles," a pro- 
ceeding essentially, though not apparently, at variance with 
the primary rule [of proceeding from the simple to the 

They find that it is better for boys to see that Hgtinm is like regnum, 
and laudare like amare, than simply to learn that lignum is of the 
Second Declension, and laudare of the First Conjugation. If boys had 
to learn by a mere effort of memory the particular declension or con- 
jugation of Latin words before they were taught anything about declen- 
sions and conjugations, this would be as sensible as the method adopted 
in some other instances, and the teachers might urge, as usual, that the 
informaticn would come in useful afterwards- 



462 HERBERT SPENCER. 

The Individual and the Race. Empirical beginning. 

complex], which implies that the mind should be introduced 
to principles through the medium of examples, and so should 
be led from the particular to the general, from the concrete- 
to the abstract." In conformity with this principle, Pesti' 
lozzi made the actual counting of things precede the teach- 
ing of abstract rules in arithmetic. Basedow introduced 
weights and measures into the school, and Mr. Spencer 
describes some exercise in cutting out geometrical figures in 
cardboard, as a preparation for geometry. The difficulty 
about such instruction is that it requires apparatus, and 
apparatus is apt to get lost or out of order. But if apparatus 
is good for anything at all, it is worth a little trouble. 
There is a tendency in the minds of many teachers to 
depreciate " mechanical appliances." Even a decent 
black-board is not always to be found in our higher schools. 
But, though such appliances will not enable a bad master 
to teach well, nevertheless, other things being equal, the 
master will teach better with them than without them. 
There is httle credit due to him for managing to dispense 
with apparatus. An author might as well pride himself on 
being saving in pens and paper. 

§ 24. 4. "The genesis of knowledge in the individual 
must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge 
in the race." This is the thesis on which I have no opinion 
to offer. 

§ 25. 5. From the above principle Mr. Spencer infers 
that every study should have a purely experimental intro- 
duction, thus proceeding through an empirical stage to a 
rational. 

§ 26. 6. A second conclusion which Mr. Spencer draws 
is that, in education, the process of self-development should 
be encouraged to the utmost. Children should be led to 



HERBERT SPENCER. 463 

Against "telling." Effect of bad teaching. 

make their own investigations, and to draw their own 
inferences. They should be told as little as possible, 
and induced to discover as much as possible. I quite 
agree with Mr. Spencer that this principle cannot be too 
strenuously insisted on, though it obviously demands a high 
amount of intelligence in the teacher. But if education is 
to be a training of the faculties, if it is to prepare the pupil 
to teach himself, something more is needed than simply to 
pour in knowledge and make the pupil reproduce it. The 
receptive and reproductive faculties form but a small portion 
of a child's powers, and yet the only portion which many 
schoolmasters seek to cultivate. It is indeed, not easy to 
get beyond this point ; but the impediment is in us, not in 
the children. " Who can watch," ask Mr. Spencer, " the 
ceaseless observation, and inquiry, and inference, going on 
in a child's mind, or listen to its acute remarks in matters 
within the range of its faculties, without perceiving that 
these powers it manifests, if brought to bear systematically 
upon studies withiii the same range, would readily master 
them without help ? This need for perpetual telling results 
from our stupidity, not from the child's. We drag it away 
from the facts in which it is interested, and which it is 
actively assimilating of itself. We put before it facts far 
too complex for it to understand, and therefore distasteful 
to it. Finding that it will not voluntarily acquire these 
facts, we thrust them into its mind by force of threats and 
punishment. By thus denying the knowledge it craves, 
and cramming it with knowledge it cannot digest, we 
produce a morbid state of its faculties, and a consequent 
disgust for knowledge in general. And when, as a result, 
partly of the stolid indolence we have brought on, and 
partly of still-continued unfitness in its studies, the child 



464 HERBERT SPENCER. 

Learning should be pleasurable. 

can understand nothing without explanation, and becomes 
a mere passive recipient of our instruction, we infer "hat 
education must necessarily be carried on thus. Having 
by our method induced helplessness, we make the helpless- 
ness a reason for our method." It is, of course, much 
easier to point out defects than to remedy them : but every 
one who has observed the usual indifference of schoolboys 
to their work, and the waste of time consequent on their 
inattention or only half-hearted attention to the matter 
before them, and then thinks of the eagerness with which 
the same boys throw themselves into the pursuits of their 
play-hours,' will feel a desire to get at the cause of this 
difference ; and, perhaps, it may seem to him partly 
accounted for by the fact that their school-work makes a 
monotonous demand on a single faculty — the memory. 

§ 27. 7. This brings me to the last of Mr. Spencer's 
principles of intellectual education. Instruction must 
excite the interest of the pupils and therefore be pleasurable 
to them. " Nature has made the healthful exercise of our 
faculties both of mind and body pleasurable. It is true 
that some of the highest mental powers as yet but little 
developed in the race, and congenitally possessed in any 
considerable degree only by the most advanced, are indis- 
posed to the amount of exertion required of them. But 
these, in virtue of their very complexity will in a normal 
course of culture come last into exercise, and will, therefore, 
have no demands made on them until the pupil has arrived 
at an age when ulterior motives can be brought into play, 
and an indirect pleasure made to counterbalance a direct 
displeasure. With all faculties lower than these, however, 
the immediate gratification consequent on activity is the 
normal stimulus, and under good management the only 



HERBERT SPENCER. 46$ 

Can learning be made interesting ? 

rieedful stimulus. When we have to fall back on some 
other, we must take the fact as evidence that we are on the 
wrong track. Experience is daily showing with greater 
clearness that there is always a method to be found produc- 
tive of interest — even of delight — and it ever turns out that 
this is the method proved by all other tests to be the right one." 

§ 28. As far as I have had the means of judging, I have 
found that the majority of teachers reject this principle. 
If you ask them why, most of them will tell you that it is 
impossible to make school-work interesting to children. A 
large number also hold that it is not desirable. Let us 
consider these two points separately. 

Of course, if it is not possible to get children to take 
interest in anything they could be taught in school, there 
is an end of the matter. But no one really goes as far as 
this. Every teacher finds that some of the things boys are 
taught they like better than others, and perhaps that one 
boy takes to one subject and another to another; and he 
also finds, both of classes and individuals, that they always 
get on best with what they like best. The utmost that can 
be maintained is, then, that some subjects which must be 
taught will not interest the majority of the learners. And 
if it be once admitted that it is desirable to make learning 
pleasant and interesting to our pupils, this principle will 
influence us to some extent in the subjects we select for 
teaching, and still more in the methods by which we 
endeavour to teach them, I say we shall be guided /"a 
soim extent in the selection of subjects. There are theorists 
who assert that nature gives to young minds a craving for 
their proper aliment, so that they should be taught only 
what they show an inclination for. But surely our natural 
inclinations in this matter, as in others, are neither on the 



i{66 HERBERT SPENCER. 

Apathy from bad teaching. 

one hand to be ignored, nor on the other to be uncontrolled 
by such motives as our reason dictates to us. We at leng;}i 
perceive this in the physical nurture of our children. Locke 
directs that children are to have very little sugar or sale. 
"Sweetmeats of all kinds are to be avoided," says he, 
" which, whether they do more harm to the maker or eater 
is not easy to teU." (Ed. § 20.) Now, however, doctors 
have found out that young people's taste for sweets should 
in moderation be gratified, that they require sugar as m.uch 
as they require any other kind of nutriment. But no one 
would think of feeding his children entirely on sweetmeats, 
or even of letting them have an unlimited supply of plum 
puddings and hardbake. If we follow out this analogy in 
nourishing the mind, we shall, to some extent, gratify a 
child's taste for " stories," whilst we also provide a large 
amount of more solid fare. But although we should 
certainly not ignore our children's hkes and dishkes in 
learning, or in anything else, it is easy to attach too much 
importance to them. Dislike very often proceeds from 
mere want of insight into the subject. When a boy has 
" done " the First Book of Euclid without knowing how to 
judge of the size of an angle, or the Second Book without 
forming any conception of a rectangle, no one can be sur- 
prised at his not liking Euclid. And then the failure which 
is really due to bad teaching is attributed by the master 
to the stupidity of his pupil, and by the pupil to the 
dulness of the subject. If masters really desired to make 
learning a pleasure to their pupils, I think they would find 
that much might be done to effect this without any alteration 
in the subjects taught. 

But the present dulness of school-work is not without 
its defenders. They insist on the importance of breaking 



HERBERT SPENCER. 467 

Should learning be made interesting ? 

in the mind to hard work. This can only be done, they 
say, by tasks which are repulsive to it. The schoolboy does 
not like, and ought not to like, learning Latin grammar any 
more than the colt should find pleasure in running round in 
a circle : the very fact that these things are not pleasant 
makes them beneficial. Perhaps a certain amount of such 
tiaining may train doivn the mind and qualify it for some 
drudgery from which it might otherwise revolt ; but if this 
result is attained, it is attained at the sacrifice of the intel- 
lectual activity which is necessaiy for any higher function. 
As Carlyle says, {^Latter- Day PP., No. iij), when speaking 
of routine work generally, you want nothing but a sorry nag 
to draw your sand-cart ; your high-spirited Arab will be 
dangerous in such a capacity. But who would advocate 
for all colts a training which should render them fit for 
nothing but such humble toil ? I shall say more about this 
furtheron(z'. pp. 472_^); here I will merely express my strong 
conviction that boys' minds are frequently dwarfed, and 
their interest in intellectual pursuits blighted, by the practice 
of employing the first years of their school-life in learning 
by heart things which it is quite impossible for them to 
understand or care for. Teachers set out by assuming that 
little boys cannot understand anything, and that all we can 
do with them is to keep them quiet and cram them with 
forms which will come in useful at a later age. When the 
boys have been taught on this system for two or three years, 
their teacher complains that they are stupid and inattentive, 
and that so long as they can say a thing by heart they never 
trouble themselves to understand it. In other words, the 
teacher grumbles at them for doing precisely what they have 
been taught to do, for repeating words without any thought 
of their meaning. 



468 HERBERT SPENCER. 

Difference between theory and practice. 

§ 29. In this very important matter I am fully alive to the 
difference between theory and practice. It is so easy to 
recommend that boys should be got to understand and take 
an interest in their work — so difficult to carry out the 
recommendation ! Grown people can hardly conceive that 
words which have in their minds been associated with 
familiar ideas from time immemorial, are mere sounds in 
the mouths of their pupils. The teacher thinks he is 
beginning at the beginning if he says that a transitive verb 
must govern an accusative, or that all the angles of a square 
are right angles. He gives his pupils credit for innate ideas 
up to this point, at all events, and advancing on this 
supposition he finds that he can get nothing out of them but 
memory-work; so he insists on this that his time and theirs 
may seem not to be wholly wasted. The great difficulty of 
teaching well, however, is after. all but a poor excuse for 
contentedly teaching badly, and it would be a great step in 
advance if teachers in general were as dissatisfied with 
themselves as they usually are with their pupils.* 

* Mr. Spencer and Professor Tyndall appeal to the results of expe- 
rience as justifying a more rational method of teaching. Speaking of 
geometrical deductions, Mr. Spencer says : " It has repeatedly occurred 
that those who have been stupefied by the ordinary school-drill — by its 
abstract formulas-, its wearisome tasks, its cramming — have suddenly had 
their intellects roused by thus ceasing to make them passive recipients, 
and inducing them to become active discoverers. The discouragement 
caused by bad teaching having been diminished by a little sympathy, 
and sufficient perseverance excited to achieve a first success, there arises 
a revolution of feeling affecting the whole nature. They no longer find 
themselves incompetent ; they too can do something. And gradually, 
as success follows success, the incubus of despair disappears, and they 
attack the difficulties of their other studies with a cournf^e insurin" 
conquest. " 



HERBERT SPENCER. 469 

Importance of H. S.'s work. 

§ 30. I do not purpose following Mr. Spencer through 
his chapters on moral and physical education. In practice 
I find I can draw no line between moral and religious 
education; so the discussion of one without the other has 
not for me much interest. Mr. Spencer has some very 
valuable remarks on physical education which I coujd do 
little more than extract, and I have already made too many 
quotations from a work which will be in the hands of most 
of my readers. 

§ 31. Mr. Spencer differs very widely from the great body 
of our schoolmasters. I have ventured in turn to differ on 
some points from Mr. Spencer ; but I have failed to give 
any adequate notion of the work I have been discussing if 
the reader has not perceived that it is not only one of the 
most readable, but also one of the most important books on 
education in tlie English language. 



XX. 

THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 



J^* I. One of the great wants of middle-class education at 
present, is an ideal to work towards. Our old public 
schools have such an ideal. The model public school-man 
is a gentleman who is an elegant Latin and Greek scholar. 
True, this may not be a very good ideal, and some of our 
ablest men, both literary and scientific, are profoundly 
dissatisfied with it. But, so long as it is maintained, all 
questions of reform are comparatively simple. In middle- 
class schools, on the other hand, there is no terminus ad 
quern. A number of boys are got together, and the question 
arises, not simply how to teach, but wJiat to teach. Where 
the marstes are not university men, they are, it may be, not 
men of broad views or high culture. Of course no one will 
suppose me ignorant of the fact that a great number of 
teachers who have never been at a university, are both 
enlightened and highly cultivated ; and also that many 
teachers who have taken degrees, even in honours, are 
neither. But, speaking broadly of the two classes, I may 
fairly assume that the non-university men are inferior in 
these respects to the graduates. If not, our universities 
should be reformed on Carlyle's " live-coal " principle with- 
out further loss of time. Many non-university masters 



THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 47 1 

Want of an ideal. 

have been engaged in teaching ever since they were boys 
themselves, and teaching is a very narrowing occupation. 
They are apt therefore to be careless of general principles, 
and to aim merely at storing their pupils' memory with 
facts — facts about language, about history, about geography, 
without troubling themselves to consider what is and what 
is not worth knowing, or what faculties the boys have, and 
how they should be developed. The consequence is their 
boys get up, for the purpose of forgetting with all convenient 
speed, quantities of details about as instructive and enter- 
taining as the Propria quce maribiis, such as the division of 
England under the Heptarchy, the battles in the wars of the 
.Roses, and lists of geographical names. Where the masters 
are university men, they have rather a contempt for this kind 
of cramming, which makes them do it badly, if they attempt 
it at all ; but they are driven to this teaching in many cases 
because they do not know what to substitute in its place. 
In their own school-education they were taught classics 
and mathematics and nothing else. Their pupil? are too 
young to have much capacity for mathematics, and they 
will leave school too soon to get any sound knowledge of 
classics ; so the strength of the teaching ought clearly not 
to be thrown into these subjects. But the master really 
knows no other. He soon finds that he is not much his 
pupils' superior in acquaintance with the theory of the 
English language or with history and geography. There 
are Dot many men with sufficient strength of will to study 
whilt.t their energies are taxed by teaching ; and standard 
books are not always within reach : so the master is forced 
to content himself with hearing lessons in a perfunctory 
way out of dreary school-books. Hence it comes to pass 
that he goes on teaching subjects of which he himself is 



472 THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

Get pupils to work hard. 

ignorant, subjects, too, of which he does not recognise the 
importance, with an enhghtened disbelief in ais own mel hod 
of tuition. He finds it uphill work, to be sure, and is 
conscious that his pupils do not get on, however hard he 
may try to drive them ; but he never hoped for success in 
his teaching, so the want of it does not distress him. I 
may be suspected of caricature, but not, I think, by 
university men who have themselves had to teach anything 
besides classics and mathematics. 

§ 2. If there is any truth in what I have been saying, 
school-teaching, in subjects other than classics and mathe- 
matics (which I am not now considering), is very commonly 
a failure. And a failure it must remain until boys can be 
got to work with a will, in other words, to feel interest in 
the subject taught. I know there is a strong prejudice in 
some people's minds against the notion of making learning 
pleasant. They remind us that school should be a pre- 
paration for after-life. After-life will bring with it an 
immense amount of drudgery. If, they say, things at 
school are made too easy and pleasant (words, by the way, 
very often and very erroneously confounded), school will 
cease to give the proper discipline : boys will be turned out 
not knowing what hard work is, which, after all, is the most 
important lesson that can be taught them. In these views 
I sincerely concur, so far as this at least, that we want 
boys to work hard, and vigorously to go through the 
necessary drudgery, i.e., labour in itself disagreeable. But 
this result is not attained by such a system as I have 
described. Boys do not learn to work hard, but in a dull 
stupid way, with most of their faculties lying dormant, and 
though they are put through a vast quantity of drudgery, 
they seem as incapable of tlirowing any energy into it as 



THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 473 

For this arouse interest. Wordsworth. 

prisoners on the tread-mill. I think we shall find on 
consideration, that no one succeeds in any occupation 
unless that occupation is interesting, either in itself or from 
some object that is to be obtained by means of it. Only 
when such an interest is aroused is energy possible. No 
one will deny that, as a rule, the most successful men are 
those for whom their employment has the greatest attractions. 
We should be sorry to give ourselves up to the treatment 
of a doctor who thought the study of disease mere drudgery, 
or a dentist who felt a strong repugnance to operating on 
teeth. No doubt the successful man in every pursuit has 
to go through a great deal of drudgery, but he has a 
general interest in the subject, which extends, partially at 
least, to its most wearisome details ; his energy, too, is 
excited by the desire of what the drudgery will gain for 
him.^ 

* On this subject I can quote the autliority of a great observer of the 
mind — no less a man, indeed, than Wordsworth. He speaks of the 
"grand elementary principal of pleasure, by which man knows, and 
feels, and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy," he continues, 
" but what is propagated by pleasure — I would not be misunderstood — 
but wherever we sympathise with pain, it will be found that the 
sympathy is produced and carried on by subtile combinations with 
pleasure. We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn 
from the comtemplation of particular facts, but what lias been built up 
by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The man of science, 
the chemist, and' mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they 
may have to struggle with, know and feel this. However painful may 
\)ii the objects with which the anatomist's knowledge may be connected, he 
feels that his knowledge is pleasure, and tvAen he has no pleasure he has 
fio knowledge." — Preface to second edition of Lyrical Ballads. So 
Wordsworth would have agreed with Tranio : (71 of Shrew, j. I.) 
" No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en ; 
In brief. Sir, study what you most affect." 



474 THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

Interest needed for activity. 

^ 3. Observe, that although I would have boys take 
pleasure in their work, I regard the pleasure as a means ^ 
not an end. If it could be proved that the mind was best 
trained by the most repulsive exercises, I should most 
certainly enforce them. But I do not think that the mind 
is ])enefited by galley-slave labour ; indeed, hardly any of 
its faculties are capable of such labour. We can compel a 
boy to learn a thing by heart, but we cannot compel him to 
wish to understand it ; and the intellect does not act 
without the will {v. sicpra p. 193). Hence, when anything 
is required which cannot be performed by the memory 
alone, the driving system utterly breaks down ; and even 
the memory, as I hope to show presently, works much 
more effectually in matters about which the mind feels an 
interest. Indeed, the mind without sympathy and interest 
is like the sea-anemone when the tide is down, an unlovely 
thing, closed against external influences, enduring existence 
as best it can. But let it find itself in a more congenial 
element, and it opens out at once, shows altogether un- 
expected capacities, and eagerly assimilates all the proper 
food that comes within its reach. Our school teaching is 
often little better than an attempt to get sea-anemones to 
flourish on dry land 

§ 4. We see then, that a boy, before he can throw 
energy into a study, must find that study ijiicreiiing in 
itself, or in its results. 

Some subjects, properly taught, are interesting in them- 
selves. 

Some sulijects may be interesting to older and m.ore 
thoughtful boys, from a perception of their usefulness. 

All subjects may be made interesting by emulation. 

§ 5. Hardly any effort is made in some schools to 



THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS, 475 

Teaching young children. 

interest the younger children in their work, and yet no 
effcrt can be, as the Germans say, more "rewarding." 
The teaclicr of children has this advantage, that his pupils 
are never dull and listless, as youths are apt to be. If they 
are not attending to him, they very soon give him notice of 
it ; and if he has the sense to see that their inattention is 
his fault, not theirs, this will save him much annoyance and 
them much misery. He has, too, another advantage, which 
gives him the power of gaining their attention — their 
emulation is easily excited. In the Waisenhaus at Halle I 
once heard a class of very young children, none of them 
much above six years old, perform feats of mental arithmetic 
quite, as I should have said, beyond their age, and I well 
remember the pretty eagerness with which each child held 
out a little hand and shouted, '■'■ Mich 1 Bitte 1 " to gain the 
privilege of answering. 

§ 6. Then again, there are many subjects in which 
children take an interest. Indeed, all visible things, 
especially animals, are much more to them than to us. 
A child has made acquaintance with all the animals in the 
neighbourhood, and can tell you much more about the 
house and its surroundings than you know yourself. But 
all this knowledge and interest you would wish forgotten 
directly he comes into school. Reading, writing, and 
figures are taught in the driest manner. The two first are 
in themselves not uninteresting to the child, as he has 
something to do, and young people are much more ready 
lo do anything than to learn anything. But when lessons 
are given the child to learn, they are not about things 
concerning which he has ideas and feels an interest, but 
you teach him mere sounds — e.g., that Alfred (to him only 
a name) came to the throne in 871, though he has no 



476 THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

Value of pictures. 

notion what the throne is, or what 871 means. The child 
learns the lesson with much trouble and small profit, 
bearing the infliction with what patience he can, till he 
escapes out of school and begins to learn much faster on a 
very different system. 

§ 7. We cannot often introduce into the school the thing, 
much less the animal, which children would care to see, 
but we can introduce what will please them as well, in 
some cases even better, viz., good pictures. A teacher 
who could draw boldly on the blackboard, would have no 
difficulty in arresting the children's attention. But, at 
present, few can do this, and pictures must be provided. 
A good deal has been done of late years in the way of 
illustrating children's books, and even childhood must be 
the happier for such pictures as those of Tenniel and 
Harrison Weir. But it seems well understood that these 
gentlemen are incapable of doing anything for children 
beyond affording them innocent amusement, and we should 
be as much surprised at seeing their works introduced into 
that region of asceticism, the English school-room, as if we 
ran across one of Raphael's Madonnas in a Baptist chapel.* 

§ 8. I had the good fortune, many years ago, to be 
present at the lessons given by a very excellent teacher to 
the youngest class, consisting both of boys and girls, at the 
first Bilrger-schule of Leipzig. In Saxony the schooling 
which the state demands for each child, begins at six years 

* This remark, I am glad to say, is much less true now ( 1 8go) than when 
fiist published. Indeed some purveyors of books for children are getting 
to rely too exclusively on the pictures, just as I have noticed that an 
organ-grinder with a monkey seldom or never has a good organ. Of 
large pictures for class teaching, some of the best I have seen (both fc« 
history and natural history) are publislied by the S.P.C.K. 



THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 477 

Dr. Vater at Leipzig. 

old, and lasts till fourteen. These children were, therefore, 
between six and seven. In one year, a certain Dr. Vater 
taught thern to read, write, and reckon. His method of 
teaching was as follows : — Each child had a book with 
pictures of objects, such as a hat, a slate, &c. Under the 
picture was the name of the object in printing and writing 
characters, and also a couplet about the object l"he 
children having opened their books, and found the picture 
of a hat, the teacher showed them a hat, and told them a 
tale connected with one. He then asked the children 
questions about his story, and about the hat he had in his 
hand — What was the colour of it ? &c. He then drew a 
hat on the blackboard, and made the children copy it on 
their slates. Next he wrote the word " hat " and told them 
that for people who could read this did as well as the 
picture. The children then copied the word on their 
slates. The teacher proceeded to analyse the word " hat, 
{hut)." " It is made up," said he, •' of three sounds, the 
most important of which is the a (u), which comes in the 
middle." In all cases the vowel sound was first ascertained 
in every syllable, and then was given an approximation to 
consonantal sounds before and after. The couplet was now 
read by the teacher, and the children repeated it after him. 
In this way the book had to be worked over and over till 
the children were perfectly familiar with everything in it. 
They had been already six months thus employed when I 
visited the school, and knew the book pretty thoroughly. 
I'd lest their knowledge. Dr. Vater first wrote a number of 
capitals at random on the board, and called out a boy to 
tell him words having these capitals as initials. This boy 
had to call out a girl to do something of tLe kind, she a 
boy, and so forth. Everything was done very smartly, both 



478 THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

Dr. Vogel and Dr. Vater. 

by master and children. The best proof I saw of their 
accuracy and quickness was this : the master traced words 
from the book very rapidly with a stick on the blackboard, 
and the children always called out the right word, though I 
could not follow him. He also wrote with chalk words 
which the children had never seen, and made them name 
first the vowel sounds, then the consonantal, then combine 
them. 

I have been thus minute in my description of this lesson, 
because it seems to me an admirable example of the way 
in which children between six and eight years of age should 
be taught. The method (see Rii egg's Fiidagogik, p. 360 ; 
also Die Normahvortenneihode, published by Orell, Fiissli, 
Zurich, 1876), was arranged and the book prepared by the 
late Dr. Vogel, who was then Director of the school. Its 
merits, as its author pointed out to me, are : — i. That it 
connects the instruction with objects of which the child 
has already an idea in his mind, and so associates new 
knowledge with old ; 2. That it gives the children plenty 
to do as well as to learn, a point on which the Doctor was 
very emphatic ; 3. That it makes the children go over the 
same matter in various ways till they have learnt a Utile 
thoro2ishl)\ and then applies their knowledge to the acquire- 
ment of more. Here the Doctor seems to have followed 
Jacotot. But though the method was no doubt a good 
one, I must say its success at Leipzig was due at least as 
much tc Di Vater as to Dr. Vogel. This gentleman had 
been taking the youngest class in this school for twenty 
years, and, whether by practice or natural talent, he had 
acquired precisely the right manner for keeping children's 
attention. He was energetic without bustle and excitement, 
and quiet without a suspicion of dulness or apathy. By 



THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 479 

First knowledge of numbers. Grube. 

frequently changing the employment of the class, and re- 
quiring smartness in everything that was done, he kej't 
them all on the alert. The lesson I have described was 
followed without pause by one in arithmetic, the two 
together occupying an hour and three quarters, and the 
interest of the children never flagged throughout. 

§ 9. Dr. Vater's method for arithmetic I cannot now 
recall ; but I do not doubt that, as a German teacher who 
had studied his profession, he understood what English 
teachers and pupil-teachers do not understand, viz., how 
children should get their first knowledge of numbers. 
Pestalozzi and Froebel insisted that children should learn 
about numbers from things which they actually counted ; 
and, according to Grube's method, which I found in Ger- 
m.any over 30 years ago, and which is now extending to 
the United States, the whole of the first year is given to 
the relations of numbers not exceeding ten (see Grube's 
Method by L. Seeley, New York, Kellogg, and F. L. 
Soldan's Grube's M., Chicago). In arithmetic everything 
depends on these relations becoming thoroughly familiar. 
The decimal scale is possibly not so good as the scale of 
eight or of twelve, but the human race has adopted it ; and 
even the French Revolutionists, with all their belief in 
" reason," and their hatred of the past, recoiled from any 
attempt to change it. But in accepting it, they endeavoured 
to remove anomalies, and so should we. Everything must 
be based on groups of ten ; and with children we should do 
well, as Mr. W. Wooding suggests, to avoid the great 
anomaly in our nomenclature, and call the numbers between 
ten and twenty {i.e., twain-tens or two-tens), "ten-one, ten- 
two, &c." Numeration should by a long way precede any 
kind of notation, and the main truths about numbers should 



48o THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

Measuring and weighing. Reading-books. 

be got at experimentally with counters or coins. In these 
truths should be included all that we usually separate under 
the " First Four Rules," and with integers we may even from 
the first give a clear conception of the fractional paits of 
whole numbers, e.g., that one third of 6 is 2.* 

Actual measuring and weighing, besides actual counting, 
go towards actual arithmetic for children. 

All this teaching, if conducted as Dr. Vater would have 
conducted it, would not give children any distaste for 
learning or make them dread the sound of the school bell. 

§ 10. I will suppose a child to have passed through 
such a course as this by the time he is eight or nine years 
old. Besides having some clear notions of number and 
form, he can now read and copy easy words. What we 
next want for him is a series of good reading-books, about 
things in which he takes an interest. The language 
must of course be simple, but the matter so good that 
neither master nor pupils will be disgusted by its frequent 
repetition. 

The first volume may very well be about animals — dogs, 
horses, &c., of which large pictures should be provided, 
illustrating the text. The first cost of these pictures would 
be considerable, but as they would last for years, the ex- 
pense to the friends of each child taught from them would 
be a mere trifle. 

§ II. The books placed in the hands of the children 
should be well printed and strongly bound. In the present 
penny-wise system, school-books are given out in cloth, and 

* Tillich's boxes of bricks (sold by the B'ham Midland Educational 
Supply Company, and by Arnold, Briggate, Leeds), are very useful for 
"iijtuitive" arithmetic: for higher stages one might say the same oi 
VV. Wooding's "Decimal Abacus" with vertical wires. 



THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 48 1 

Respect for books. Grammar. Reading. 

the leaves are loose at the end of a fortnight, so that 
children get accustomed to their destruction and treat t as 
a matter of course. This ruins their respect for books, 
which is not so unimportant a matter as it may at fiist 
appear. 

§ 12. After each reading lesson, which should contain 
at least one interesting anecdote, there should be columns 
of all the words which occurred for the first time in that 
lesson. These should be arranged according to their 
grammatical classification, not that the child should be taught 
grammar, but this order is as good as any other, and by it 
the child would learn to observe certain differences in words 
almost unconsciously.* 

Here I cannot resist quoting an excellent remark from 
Helps's Brevia (p. 125). "We should make the greatest 
progress in art, science, politics, and morals, if we could 
train up our minds to look straight and steadfastly and 
uninterruptedly at the thing in question that we are ob- 
serving. This seems a very slight thing to do ; but prac- 
tically it is hardly ever done. Between you and the object 
rises a mist of technicalities, of prejudices, of previous 
knowledge, and, above all, of terrible familiarity." Perhaps 

* The grammar question is still a perplexing one. There are In- 
spectors who require children (as I once heard in a remote country 
school) to distinguish "7 kinds of adverbs." Then we have children 
discriminating after the fashion of one of my own pupils, (I quote from 
a grammar paper,) "Parse it." "It is a prepreition. Almost all 
small words are prepreitions. " In such cases it is very hard indeed to 
find any common ground for the minds of the old and the young. The 
true way I believe is to lead the young to make their own observations. 
The way is very very slow, but it developes power. I have lately seen 
an interesting little book on these lines, called Language Work by Dr. 
De Garmo (Bloomington, 111., U.S.A.) 
GG 



482 THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

Silent and Vocal Reading. 

it is this " terrible familiarity " that has prevented our seeing 
till quite lately that reading is the art of getting meaning 
by signs that appeal to the eye, not the art of reporting to 
otners the meaning we have thus arrived at. "Accustoming 
boys to read aloud what they do not first understand," says 
Benjamin Franklin, "is the cause of those even set tones 
so common among readers, which, when they have once 
got a habit of using [them], they find so difficult to correct ; 
by which means, among fifty readers we scarcely find a 
good one." (^Essays^ Sk. of English Sck.) It seems to 
have escaped even Franklin's sagacity that reading aloud is 
a different art to the art of reading, and a much harder one. 
The two should be studied separately, and most time and 
attention should be given to silent reading, which is by far 
the more important of the two. Colonel F. W. Parker, 
who has successfully cultivated the power of " looking 
straight at" things, gives us in his Talks on Teaching 
the right rule for reading. " Changing," says he, " the 
beautiful power of expression, full of melody, harmony, and 
correct emphasis and inflection, to the slow, painful, almost 
agonising pronunciation that we have heard so many times 
in the school-room, is a terrible sin that we should never 
be guilty of. There is, indeed, not the slightest need of 
changing a good habit to a miserable one if we would 
follow the rule that the child has naturally followed all his 
life. Never allow a child to give a thought till he gets it " 
(p. 37). Now that the existence of a thought in children 
is allowed for, we may expect all sorts of improvements. 
Reading, as a means of ascertaining thought, is second only 
to hearing, and this art should be cultivated by giving 
children books of questions (e.g., Horace Grant's Arithmetic 



THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 483 

Memorising poetry. Composition. 

for Young Children), and requiring the learner silently to 
gel at the question and then give the answer aloud. 

§ T3. Easy descriptive and narrative poetry should be 
learnt by heart at this stage. That the children may repeat 
it well, they should get their first notions of it from the 
master viva voce. According to the usual plan, they get 
it up with false emphasis and false stops, and the more 
thoroughly they have learnt the piece, the more difficulty 
the master has in making them say it properly. 

§ 14. Every lesson should be worked over in various 
ways. The columns of words at the end of the reading 
lessons may be printed with writing characters, and used 
for copies. To write an upright column either of words or 
figures is an excellent exercise in neatness. The columns 
will also be used as spelling lessons, and the children may 
be questioned about the meaning of the words. The 
poetry, when thoroughly learned, may sometimes be written 
from memory. Sentences from the book may be copied 
either directly or from the black-board, and afterwards used 
for dictation. 

§ 15. Boys should, as soon as possible, be accustomed to 
write out fables, or the substance of other reading lessons, 
in their own words. They may also write descriptions of 
things with which they are familiar, or any event which has 
recently happened, such as a country excursion. Every 
one feels the necessity, on grounds of practical utility at all 
events, of boys being taught to express their thoughts neatly 
on paper, in good English and with correct spelling. Yet 
this is a point rarely reached before the age of fifteen or 
sixteen, often never reached at all. The reason is, that 
written exercises must be carefully looked over by the 
master, or they are done in a slovenly manner. Anyone 



484 THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

Correcting exercises. Three kinds of booics. 

who has never taught in a school will say, "Then let the 
master carefully look them over." But the expenditure of 
time and trouble this involves on the master is so great, 
that in the end he is pretty sure either to have few exercises 
written, or to neglect to look them over. The only remedy 
is for the master not to have many boys to teach, and not 
to be many hours in school. Even then, unless he set 
apart a special time every day for correcting exercises, he is 
likely to find them " increase upon him." 

§ 16. The course of reading-books, accompanied by 
large illustrations, may go on to many other things which 
the children see around them, such as trees and plants, and 
so lead up to instruction in natural history and physiology. 
But in imparting all knowledge of this kind, we should aim, 
not at getting the children to remember a number of facts, 
but at opening their eyes, and extending the range of their 
interests. 

§ 17. I should suggest, then, for children, three books to 
be used concurrently, viz.^ a reading book about animals 
and things, a poetry book, and a prose narrative or ^'Esop's 
Fables. With the first commences a series culminating in 
works of science ; with the second, a series that should 
lead up to Milton and Shakespeare ; the third should be 
succeeded by some of our best writers in prose. 

§ 18. But many schoolmasters will shudder at the 
thought of a child's spending a year or two at school without 
ever hearing of the Heptarchy or Magna Charta, and without 
knowing the names of the great towns in any country of 
Europe. I confess I regard this ignorance with great 
equanimity. If the child, or the youth even, takes no 
interest in the Heptarchy and Magna Charta, and knows 
nothing of the towns but their names, I think him quite as 



THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 485 

No epitomes. 

well off without this knowledge as with it — perhaps better, 
as such knowledge turns the lad into a '• wind-bag," as 
Carlyle might say, and gives him the appearance of being 
well-informed without the reality But I neither despise 
a knowledge of history and geography ; nor do I think 
th.'it these studies should be neglected for foreign languages 
or science : and it is because I should wish a pupil of mine 
to become, in the end, thoroughly conversant in history 
and geography, that I should, if possible, conceal from him 
the existence of the numerous school manuals on these 
subjects. 

We will suppose that a parent meets with a book which 
he thinks will be both instructive and entertaining to his 
children. But the book is a large one, and would take a 
long time to get through ; so instead of reading any part 
of it to them or letting them read it for themselves, he 
makes them learn by heart the table of contents. The children 
do not find it entertaining ; they get a horror of the book, 
which prevents their ever looking at it afterwards, and they 
forget what they have learnt as soon as they possibly can. 
Just such is the sagacious plan adopted in teaching history 
and geography in schools, and such are the natural con- 
sequences. Every student knows that the use of an epitome 
is to systematise knowledge, not to communicate it, and yet, 
in teaching, we give the epitome first, and allow it to pre- 
cede, or rather to supplant, the knowledge epitomised, 
l^he children are disgusted, and no wonder. The subjects, 
indeed; are interesting, but not so the epitomes. I suppose 
if we could see the skeletons of the Gunnings, we should 
not find them more fascinating than any other skeletons.* 

• Books for a beginner should contain a little matter in much space, 



486 THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

Ascham, Bacon, Goldsmith, against them. 

§ 19. The first thing to be aimed at, then, is to excite 
the children's interest. Even if we thought of nothing but 
the acquiring of information, this is clearly the true method. 



and, as they are usually written, they contain much matter in a little 
space. Nothing can be truer than the saying of Lakanal, " L'abrege est 
le contraire de I'elementaire : That which is abridged is >ust the 
opposite of that which is elementary." When shall we learn what 
seems obvious in itself aftd what is taught us by the great authorities ? 
"Epitome," says Ascham, "is good privately for himself that doth 
work it, but ill commonly for all others that use other men's labour 
therein. A silly poor kind of study, not unlike to the doing of those 
poor folk which neither till, nor sow, nor reap themselves, but glean by 
stealth upon other's grounds. Such have empty barns for dear years." 
{School Master, Book ij.) Bacon says (De Aug., lib. vj., cap. iv.), 
"Ad psedagogicam quod attinet brevissimum foret dictu. . . . Illud 
imprimis consuluerim ut caveatur a compendiis : Not much about 
pedagogics. . . . My chief advice is, keep clear of compendiums." 
And yet "the table of contents "method which I suggested in irony I after- 
wards found proposed in all seriousness in an announcement of Dr. J. 
F. Bright's English History : ' ' The marginal analysis has been collected 
at the beginning of the volume so as to form an abstract of the history 
suitable for the use of those who are beginning the study." 

1 would rather listen to Oliver Goldsmith : "In history, such stories 
alone should be laid before them as might catch the imagination : in- 
stead of this, they are too frequently obliged to toil through the four 
Empires, as they are called, where their memories are burthened by a 
number of disgusting names that destroy all their future relish for cur 
best historians." (Letter on Education in the Bee : a letter containing 
so much new truth that Goldsmith in re-publishing it had to point out 
that it had appeared before Rousseau's Emile.) A modern authority on 
education has come to the same conclusion as Goldsmith. "The first 
teaching in history will not give dates, but will show the learner men 
and actions likely to make an impression on him. Der erste Geschichts- 
unterricht wird nicht Jahrcszahlen geben, sondern eindrucksvolle 
Personen und Thaten vorfuhren." (L. Wiese's Deutsche Bildungsfragen, 
1S71. 



THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 487 

Arouse interest. Dr. Arnold's historical primer. 

What are the facts which we remember ? Those in which 
we feel an interest. If we are told that So-and-so has met 
with an accident, or failed in business, we forget it directly, 
unless we know the person spoken of. Similarly, if I read 
anything about Addison or Goldsmith, it interests me, and 
1 remember it because they are, so to speak, friends of 
mine ; but the same information about Sir Richard Black 
more or Cumberland would not stay in my head for four- 
and-twenty hours. So, again, we naturally retain anything 
we learn about a foreign country in which a relation has 
settled, but it would require some little trouble to commit 
to memory the same facts about a place in which we had 
no concern. All this proceeds from two causes. First, 
that the mind retains that in which it takes an interest ; 
and, secondly, that one of the principal helps to memory is 
the association of ideas. These were, no doubt, the ground 
reasons which influenced Dr. Arnold in framing his plan of 
a child's first history book. This book, he says, should be 
a picture-book of the memorable deeds which would best 
appeal to the child's imagination. They should be arranged 
in order of time, but with no other connection. The letter- 
press should simply, but fully, tell the story of the action 
depicted. These would form starting-points of interest. 
The child would be curious to knew more about the great 
men whose acquaintance he had made, and would associate 
rvith them the scenes of their exploits ; and thus we might 
actually find our children anxious to learn history and 
geography ' I am sorry that even the great authority of 
Dr. Arnold has not availed to bring this method into use. 
Such a book would, of course, be dear. Bad pictures are 
worse than none at all : and Goethe tells us that his appre- 
ciation of Homer was for years destroyed by his having 



488 THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 



A Macaulay, not Mangnall, wanted. 

been shown, when a child, absurd pictures of the Homeric 
heroes. The book would, therefore, cost six or eight 
shillings at least ; and who would give this sum for an 
account of single actions of a few great men, when he might 
buy the lives of all great men, together with ancient and 
modern history, the names of the planets, and a great 
amount of miscellaneous information, all for a shilling in 
" Mangnall's Questions " ? 

However, if the saving of a few shillings is more to be 
thought of than the best method of instruction, the subject 
hardly deserves our serious consideration. 

§ 20. It is much to be regretted that books for the 
young are so seldom written by distinguished authors. I 
suppose that of the three things which the author seeks, 
money, reputation, influence, the first is not often despised, 
nor the last considered the least valuable. And yet both 
money and influence are more certainly gained by a good 
book for the young than by any other. The influence 
of " Tom Brown," however different in kind, is probably 
not smaller in amount than that of " Sartor Resartus." 

§ 21. What we want is a Macaulay for boys, who shall 
handle historical subjects with that wonderful art displayed 
in the " Essays," — the art of elaborating all the more telling 
portions of the subject, outlining the rest, and suppressing 
everything that does not conduce to heighten the general 
effect. Some of these essays, such as the " Hastings " and 
" Clive," will be read with avidity by the elder boys ; but 
Macaulay did not write for children, and he abounds in 
words to them unintelligible. Had he been a married man, 
we might perhaps have had such a volume of historical 
sketches for boys as now we must wish for in vain. But 
tliere are good story-tellers left among us, and we might 



THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 489 

Beginnings in history and geography. 

soon expect such books as we desiderate, if it were clearly 
understood what is the right sort of book, and if men of 
literary ability and experience would condescend to write 
them. 

§ 22. If, in these latter days, "the individual withers, 
and the world is more and more," we must not expect our 
children to enter into this. Their sympathy and their imagi- 
nation can be aroused, not for nations, but for individuals ; 
and this is the reason why some biographies of great men 
should precede any history. These should be written after 
Macaulay's method. There should be no attempt at com- 
pleteness, but what is most important and interesting about 
the man should be narrated in detail, and the rest lightly 
sketched, or omitted altogether. Painters understand this 
principle, and, in taking a portrait, very often depict a man's 
features minutely without telling all the truth about the 
buttons on his waistcoat. But, because in a literary picture 
each touch takes up additional space, writers seem to fear 
that the picture will be distorted unless every particular is 
expanded or condensed in the same ratio. 

§ 23. At the risk of wearisome repetition, I must again 
say that I care as little about driving " useful knowledge " 
into a boy as the most ultra Cambridge man could wish ; 
but I want to get the boy to have wide sympathies, and to 
teach himself; and I should therefore select the great men 
from very different periods and countries, that his net of 
interest (so to speak) may be spread in all waters. 

§ 24. When we have thus got our boys to form the 
acquaintance of great men, they will have certain associa- 
tions connected with many towns and countries. Constant 
reference should be made to the map, and the boys' know- 
ledge and interest will thus make settlements in different 



490 THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

Tales of Travelers. 

parts of the globe. These may be extended by a good 
book of travels, especially of voyages of discovery. There 
are now many such books suitable for the purpose, but I 
am still partial to a book which has been a delight to me 
and to my own children from our earliest years : — Miss 
Hack's " Winter Evenings ; or, Tales of Travelers " ; or, 
as Routledge now calls a part of it, " Travels in Hot and 
Cold Lands." In studying such travels, the map should, 
of course, be always in sight ; and outline maps may be 
filled up by the boys as they learn about the places in the 
traveller's route. Anyone who has had the management of 
a school library knows how popular " voyage and venture " 
is with the boys who have passed the stage -in which the 
picture-books of animals were the main attraction. Captain 
Cook, Mungo Park, and Admiral Byron are heroes without 
whom boyhood would be incomplete ; but as boys are 
engrossed by the adventures, and never trouble themselves 
about the map, they often remember the incidents without 
knowing where they happened. 

Of course, school geographies never mention such people 
as celebrated travellers ; if they did, it would be impossible 
to give all the principal geographical names in the world 
within the compass of 200 pages. 

§ 25. What might we fairly expect from such a course 
of teaching as I have here suggested ? 

At the end of a year and a half, or two years, from the 
age, say, of nine, the boy would read to himself intelligently ; 
he would write fairly ; he would sjjell all common English 
words correctly ; he would be thoroughly familiar with the 
relations of all common numbers, that is, of all numbers 
below 100 ; he would have had his interest aroused, or, to 
speak more accurately, not stifled but increased in common 



THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 49I 

Results positive and negative. 

objects, such as animals, trees, and plants ; he would have 
made the acquaintance of some great men, and traced the 
voyages of some great travellers ; he would be able to say 
by heart and to write from memory some of the best simple 
English poetry, and his ear would be familiar with the 
sound of good English prose. So much, at least, on the 
positive side. On the negative there might also be results 
of considerable value. He would not have learned to look 
upon books and school-time as the torment of his life, nor 
have fallen into the habit of giving them as little of his 
attention as he could reconcile with immunity from the 
cane. The benefit of the negative result might outweigh a 
very glib knowledge of " tables " and Latin Grammar. 



XXL 

THE SCHOOLMASTER'S MORAL AND 
RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE. 



§ I. All who are acquainted with the standard treatises 
on the theory of education, and also with the management 
of schools, will have observed that moral and religious train- 
ing occupies a larger and more prominent space in theory 
than in practice. On consideration, we shall find perhaps 
that this might naturally be expected. Of course we are all 
agreed that morality is more important than learning, and 
masters who are many of them clergymen, will hardly be 
accused of under-estimating the value of religion. Why 
then, does not moral and religious training receive a larger 
share of the master's attention ? The reason I take to 
be this. Experience shows that it depends directly on 
the master whether a boy acquires knowledge, but only 
indirectly, and in a much less degree, whether he grows up 
a good and religious man. The aim which engrosses most 
of our time is likely to absorb an equal share of our interest ; 
and thus it happens that masters, especially those who never 
associate on terms of intimacy with their pupils out of 
school, throw energy enough into making boys learn, but 
seldom think at all of the development of their character, 
or about their thoughts and feelings in matters of religion 



scpioolmaster's moral influence. 493 

Master's power, how gained and lost. 

This statement may indeed be exaggerated, but no one who 
has the means of judging will assert that it is altogether 
without foundation. And yet, although a master can be 
more certain of sending out his pupils well-taught than well- 
principled, his influence on their character is much greater 
than it might appear to a superficial observer. I am not 
speaking of formal religious instruction. I refer now to the 
teacher's indirect influence. The results of his formal teach- 
ing vary as its amount, but he can apply no such gauge to 
his informal teaching. A few words of earnest advice or re- 
monstrance, which a boy hears at the right time from a man 
whom he respects, may affect that boy's character for life. 
Here everything depends, not on the words used, but on 
the feeling with which they are spoken, and on the way in 
which the speaker is regarded by the hearer. In such 
matters the master has a much more delicate and difficult 
task than in mere instruction. The words, indeed, are soon 
spoken, but that which gives them their influence is not 
soon or easily acquired. Here, as in so many other in- 
stances, we may in a few minutes throw down what it has 
cost us days — perhaps years — to build up. An unkind 
word will destroy the effects of long-continued kindness 
Boys always form their opinion of a man from the worst 
they know of him. Experience has not yet taught them 
that good people have their failings, and bad people their 
virtues. If the scholars find the master at times harsh and 
testy, they cannot believe in his kindness of heart and care 
for their welfare. They do not see that he may have an 
ideal before him to which he is partly, though not wholly 
true. They judge him by his demeanour in his least guarded 
moments — at times when he is jaded and dissatisfied with 
the result of his labours. At such times he is no longer 



494 schoolmaster's moral influence. 
Masters, the open and the reserved. 

" in touch " with his pupils. He is conscious only of his 
own power and mental superiority. Feeling almost a con- 
tempt for the boys' weakness, he does not care for their 
opinion of him or think for an instant what impression he is 
making by his words and conduct. He gives full play lo 
his arbitriuin, and says or does something which seems to 
the boys to reveal him in his true character, and which 
causes them ever after to distrust his kindness. 

§ 2. When we consider the way in which masters endeavour 
to gain influence, we shall find that they may be divided 
roughly into two parties, whom I will call the open and the 
reserved. A teacher of the open party endeavours to appear 
to his pupils precisely as he is. He will hear of no restraint 
except that of decorum. He believes that if he is as much 
the superior of his pupils as he ought to be, his authority 
will take care of itself without his casting round it a wall of 
artificial reserve. " Be natural," he says ; " get rid of affec- 
tations and shams of all kinds ; and then, if there is any 
good in you, it will tell on those around you. Whatever is 
bad, would be felt just as surely in disguise ; and the dis- 
guise would only be an additional source of mischief." The 
reserved, on the other hand, wish their pupils to think of 
them as they ought to be rather than as they are. Against 
the other party they urge that our words and actions cannot 
always be in harmony with our thoughts and feelings, how- 
ever much we may desire to make them so. We nmst, 
therefore, they say, reconcile ourselves to this ; and since 
our words and actions are more under our control than our 
thoughts and feelings, we must make them as nearly as 
possible what they should be, instead of debasing them to 
involuntary thoughts and feelings which are not worthy o\ 
us. Then again, a teacher who is an idealist may say, 



schoolmaster's moral influence. 495 

Danger of excess either way. 

'* The young require some one to look up to. In my 
better moments I am not altogether unworthy of their 
respect ; but if they knew all my weaknesses, they would 
naturally, and perhaps justly, despise me. For their sakes, 
therefore, I must keep my weaknesses out of sight, and the 
effort to do this demands a certain resei"ve in all our inter- 
course." 

§ 3. I suppose an excess in either direction might lead 
to miscjiievous results. The " open " man might be want- 
ing in self-restraint, and might say and do things which, 
though not wrong in themselves, might have a bad effect on 
the young. Then, again, the lower and more worldly side 
of his character might show itself in too strong relief; and 
his pupils seeing this mainly, and sujiposing that they 
understood him entirely, might disbelieve in his higher 
motives and religious feeling. On the other hand, those 
who set up for being better than they really are, are, as it 
were, walking on stilts. They gain no real influence by their 
separation from their pupils, and they are always liable to 
an accident which may expose them to their ridicule.* 

§ 4. I am, therefore, though with some limitation, in 
favour of the open school. I am well aware, however, what 
an immense demand this system makes on the master who 
desires to exercise a good influence on the moral and re- 
ligious character of his pupils. If he would have his pupils 
know him as he is, if he would have them think as he thinks, 
feel as he feels, and believe as he believes, he must be, at 
least in heart and aim, worthy of their imitation. He must 

* Dr. Jas. Donaldson has well said of the educator: — "The most 
unguarded of his acts, those which come from the depth of his nature, 
uncalled for and unbidden, are the actions which have the most powerful 
influence." Chambers' Information sub v. Education^ p. 565. 



496 schoolmaster's moral influence. 

High ideal. Danger of low practice. 

(with reverence be it spoken) enter, in his humble way, 
into the spirit of the perfect Teacher, who said, "For their 
sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in 
truth." Are we prepared to look upon our calling in this 
light? I believe that the school-teachers of this country 
need not fear comparison with any other body of men, in 
point of morality, and religious earnestness ; but I dare say 
many have found, as I have, that the occupation is a very 
narrowing one, that the teacher soon gets to work in a groove, 
and from having his thoughts so much occupied with 
routine work, especially with small fault-findings and small 
corrections, he is apt to settle down insensibly into a kind 
of moral and intellectual stagnation — Philistinism, as 
Matthew Arnold has taught us to call it — in which he cares 
as little for high aims and general principles as his most 
commonplace pupil. Thus it happens sometimes that a 
man who set out with the notion of developing all the 
powers of his pupils' minds, thinks in the end of nothing 
but getting them to work out equations and do Latin 
exercises without false concords ; and the clergyman even, 
who began with a strong sense of his responsibility and a 
confident hope of influencing the boys' belief and character, 
at length is quite content if they conform to discipline and 
give him no trouble out of school-hours. We may say of a 
really good teacher what Wordsworth says of the poet ; in 
his work he must neither 

lack that first great gift, the vital soul, 
Nor general truths, wliich are themselves a sort 
Of elements and agents, under-powers, 
Subordinate helpers of the living mind. — Prelude, i, gi 

But the " vital soul " is too often crushed by excessive 
routine labour, and then when general truths, both moral 



schoolmaster's moral influence. 497 
Harm from overworking teachers. 

and intellectual, have ceased to interest us, our own educa- 
tion stops, and we become incapable of fulfilling the highest 
and most important part of our duty in educating others. 

§ 5. It is, then, the duty of the teacher to resist gravita^ 
ling into this state, no less for his pupils' sake than for his 
own. The ways and means of doing this I am by no means 
competent to point out ; so I will merely insist on the 
importance of teachers not being overworked — a matter 
which has not, I think, hitherto received due attention. 

We cannot expect intellectual activity of men whose 
minds are compelled " with pack-horse constancy to keep 
the road" hour after hour, till they are too jaded for 
exertion of any kind. The man himself suffers, and his 
work, even his easiest work, suffers also. It may be laid 
down as a general rule, that no one can teach long and 
teach well. All satisfactory teaching and management of 
boys absolutely requires that the master should be in good 
spirits. When the " genial spirits fail," as they must from 
an overdose of monotonous work, everything goes wrong 
directly. The master has no longer the power of keeping 
the boys' attention, and has to resort to punishments even 
to preserve order. His gloom quenches their interest and 
mental activity, just as fire goes out before carbonic acid ; 
and in the end teacher and taught acquire, not without 
cause, a feeling of mutual aversion. 

§ 6. And another reason why the master should not 
spend the greater part of his time in formal teaching is this 
— his doing so compels him to neglect the informal but 
very important teaching he may both give and receive by 
making his pupils his companions. 

§ 7. I fear I shall be met here by an objection which has 
only too much force in it. Most Englishmen are at a los« 

HH 



498 scpioolmaster's moral influence. 

Refuge in routine work. Small schools. 

how to make any use of leisure. If a man has no turn foi 
thinking, no fondness for reading, and is without a hobby, 
what good shall his leisure do him ? he will only pass it in 
insipid gossip, from which any easy work would be a relief 
That this is so in many cases, is a proof to my mind of the 
utter failure of our ordinary education : and perhaps an 
improved education may some day. alter what now seems a 
national peculiarity. Meantime the mind, even of English- 
men, is more than a " succedaneum for salt ;"* and its 
tendency to bury its sight, ostrich-fashion, under a heap of 
routine work must be strenuously resisted, if it is to escape 
its deadly enemies, stupidity and ignorance. 

§ 8. I have elsewhere expressed what I believe is the 
common conviction of those who have seen something both 
of large schools and of small, viz., that the moral atmosphere 
of the former is, as a rule, by far the more wholesome ;t 

* " That you are wife 

To so much bloated flesh as scarce hath soul 
Instead of salt to keep it sweet, I think 
Will ask no witnesses to prove." 

Ben Jonson : The Devil is an Ass, Act i. sc. 3. 
t I fortify myself with the following quotation from the Book about 
Dominies by *' Ascott Hope " (Hope Moncrieff). He says that a school 
of from twenty to a hundred boys is too large to be altogether under the 
influence of one man, and too small for the development of a healthy 
condition of public opinion among the boys themselves. " In a com • 
munity of fifty boys, there will always be found so many bad ones who 
will be likely to carry things their own way. Vice is more unblushing 
in small societies than in large ones. Fifty boys will be more easily 
leavened by the wickedness of five, tha7ifive hundred by that 'rf fifty. It 
would be too dangerous an ordeal to send a boy to a school where sin 
appears fashionable, and where, if he would remain virtuous, he must 
shun his companions. There may be middle-sized schools which derive 
a good and healthy tone from the moral strength of their masters or the 



schoolmaster's moral influence. 499 

Influence through the Sixth. Day schools wanted. 

and also that each boy is more influenced by his companions 
than by his master. More than this, I beheve that in many, 
perhaps in most, schools, one or two boys affect the tone of 
the whole body more than any master.* What are called 
Preparatory Schools labour under this immense disadvantage, 
that their ruling spirits are mere children without reflection 
or sense of responsibility.! But where the leading boys are 
virtually young men, these may be made a medium through 
which the mind of the master may act upon the whole 
school. They can enter into the thoughts, feelings, and aims 
of the master on the one hand, and they know what is said 
and done among the boys on the other. The master must, 
therefore, know the elder boys intimately, and they must 

good example of a certain set of boys, but I doubt if there are many. 
Boys are so easily led to do right or wrong, that we should be very 
careful at least to set the balance fairly" (p. 167) ; and again he says 
(p. 170). "The moral tone of a middle-sized school will be peculiarly 
liable to be at the mercy ota set of bold and bad boys." 

* As I have been thought to express myself too strongly on this point, 
I will give a quotation from a master whose opinion will go far with all 
who know him. *' The moral tone of the school is made what it is, 
not nearly so much by its rules and regulations, or its masters, as by the 
leading characters amonji the boys. They mainly determine the public 
opinion amongst their schoolfellows — their personal influence is incal- 
culable." Rev. D. Edwardes, of Denstone. 

t About Preparatory Schools I find I am at issue with my friend the 
Head Master of Harrow (See Public Schools, by Rev. J. E. C. Welldon, 
in Contemporary R., May, 1890). I do indeed incline to his opinion that 
very young boys should not be at a public school, but I cannot agree 
that they should be at a middle-sized boarding school. I hold that they 
jhould live in a family (their own if possible) and go to a day school. 
Day Schools have now been provided for girls, but for young boys they 
do not seem in demand. English parents who can afford it send their 
sons to boarding schools from eight years old onwards. This seems to 
me a great mistake of theirs. 



50O SCHOOLMASTER'S MORAL INFLUENCE. 

Teaching religion in England and Germany. 

know him. This consummation, however, will not be 
arrived at without great tact and self-denial on the part of 
the master. The youth who is " neither man nor boy " is 
apt to be shy and awkward, and is not by any means so easy 
to entertain as the lad who chatters freely of the school's 
cricket or football, past, present, and to come. But the 
master who feels how all-important is the tone of the school, 
will not grudge any pains to influence those on whom it 
chiefly depends. 

§ 9. But, allowing the value of all these indirect influences, 
can we afford to neglect direct formal religious instruction ? 
We have most of us the greatest horror of what we call a 
secular education, meaning thereby an education without 
formal religious teaching. But this horror seems to affect 
our theory more than our practice. Few parents ever 
enquire what religious instruction their sons get at Eton, 
Harrow, or Westminster. At Harrow when I was in the 
Fourth Form there (nearly fifty yeaj-s ago by the way) we 
had no religious instruction except a weekly lesson in Watts's 
Scripture History ; and when I was a master some twenty 
years ago my form had only a Sunday lesson in a portion 
of the Old Testament, and a lesson in French Testament at 
" First School " on Mbnday. Even in some " Voluntary 
Schools " we do not find " religious instruction " made so 
much of as the arithmetic. 

§ 10. In this matter we differ very widely from the 
Germans. All their classes have a "religion-lesson " {Religion- 
siuride) nearly every day, the younger children in the German 
Bible, the elder in the Greek Testament or Church History ; 
and in all cases the teacher is careful to instruct his pupils 
in the tenets of Luther or Calvin. The Germans may 
urge that if we believe a set of doctrines to be a fitting 



schoolmaster's moral influence. 501 

Religious teaching connected with worship. 

expression of Divine revelation, it is our first duty to make 
the young familiar with those doctrines. I cannot say, 
however, that I have been favourably impressed by the 
leligion-lessons I have heard given in German schools. I 
do not deny that dogmatic teaching is necessary, but the 
first thing to cultivate in the young is reverence ; and 
reverence is surely in danger if you take a class in " religion" 
just as you take a class in grammar. Emerson says some- 
where, that to the poet, the saint, and the philosopher, all 
distinction of sacred and profane ceases to exist, all things 
become alike sacred. As the schoolboy, however, does not 
as yet come under any one of these denominations, if the 
distinction ceases to exist for him, all things will become 
alike profane. 

§ II. I believe that religious instruction is conveyed in 
the most impressive way when it is connected with worship. 
Where the prayers are joined with the reading of Scripture 
and with occasional simple addresses, and where the congre- 
gation have responses to repeat, and psalms and hymns to 
sing, there is reason to hope that boys will increase, not only 
in knowledge, but in wisdom and reverence too. With- 
out asserting that the Church of England service is the best 
possible for the young, I hold that any form for them should 
at least resemble it in its main features, should be as varied 
as possible, should require frequent change of posture, and 
should give the congregation much to say and sing. Much 
use might be made as in the Church of Rome, of litanies. 
The service, whatever its form, should be conducted with 
great solemnity, and the boys should not sit or kneel so 
close together that the badly disposed may disturb their 
neighbours who try to join in the act of worship. If good 
hymns are sung, these may be taken occasionally as the 



502 schoolmaster's moral influence. 

Education to goodness and piety. 

subject of an address, so that attention may be drawn to 
their meaning. Music should be carefully attended to> 
and the danger of irreverence at practices guarded against 
by never using sacred words more than is necessary, and hy 
impressing on the singers the sacredness of everything 
connected with Divine worship. Questions combined 
with instruction may sometimes keep up boys' attention 
better than a formal sermon. Though common prayer 
should be frequent, this should not be supposed to take the 
place of private prayer. In many schools boys have hardly 
an opportunity for private prayer. They kneel down, per- 
haps, with all the talk and play of their schoolfellows going 
on around them, and sometimes fear of pubhc opinion 
prevents their kneeling down at all. A schoolmaster can- 
not teach private prayer, but he can at least see that there 
is opportunity for it. 

Education to goodness and piety, as far as it lies in 
human hands, must consist almost entirely in the influence 
of the good and pious superior over his inferiors, and as 
this influence is independent of rules, these remarks of 
mine cannot do more than touch the surface of this most 
important subject.* 

§ 12. In conclusion, I wish to say a word on the educa- 
tion of opinion. Sir Arthur Helps lays great stress on 

* •' What s education ? It is that which is imbibed from the moral 
atmosphere which a child breathes. It is the involuntary and uncon- 
scious language of its parents and of all those by whom it is surrounded, 
and not their set speeches and set lectures. It is the words which the 
young hear fall from their seniors when the speakers are off their 
guard : and it is by these unconscious expressions that the child inter- 
prets the hearts of its parents. That is education." — Drummond's 
Speeches in Parliament. 



schoolmaster's moral influence. 503 

How to avoid narrow-mindedness. 

preparing the way to moderation and open-mindedness by 
teaching boys that all good men are not of the same way of 
thinking. It is indeed a miserable error to lead a young 
person to suppose that his small ideas are a measure of the 
universe, and that all who do not accept his formularies are 
less enlightened than himself. If a young man is so brought 
up, he either carries intellectual blinkers all his life, or, 
what is far more probable, he finds that something he has 
been taught is false, and forthwith begins to doubt every- 
thing. On the other hand, it is a necessity with the young 
to believe, and we could not, even if we would, bring a youth 
into such a state of mind as to regard everything about which 
there is any variety of opinion as an open question. But he 
may be taught reverjnce and humility ; he may be taught 
to reflect how infinitely greater the facts of the universe 
must be than our poor thoughts about them, and how in 
adequate are words to express even our imperfect thoughts. 
Then he will not suppose that all truth has been taught him 
in his formularies, nor that he understands even all the 
truth of which those formularies are the imperfect expression,* 

* In what I have said on this subject, the incompleteness which is 
noticeable enough in the preceding essays, has found an appropriate 
climax. I see, too, that if anyone would take the trouble, the little 1 
have said might easily be misinterpreted. I am well aware, however, 
that if the young mind will not readily assimilate sharply defining re- 
ligious formulas, still less will it feel at home among the " immensities " 
and "veracities." The great educating force of Christianity I believe 
to be due to this, that it is not a set of abstractions or vague generalities, 
but that in it God reveals Himself to us in a Divine Man, and raises us 
through our devotion to Him. I hold, therefore, that religious teaching 
for the young should neither be vague nor abstract. Mr. Froude, in 
commenting on the use made of hagiology in the Church of Rome, has 
shown that we lose much by not following the Bible method of instruc- 
tion. ( See Short Studies : Lives of the Saints, and Representative Men. ) 



xxn. 

CONCLUSION. 



§ 1. When I originally published these essays (more than 
2 2 years ago) the critic of the Noncotiformist in one of the 
best, though by no means most complimentary, of the many 
notices with which the book was favoured, took me to task 
for being in such a hurry to publish. I had confessed 
incompleteness. What need was there for me to publish 
before I had completed my work ? Since that time I have 
spent years on my subject and at least two years on these 
essays themselves ; but they now seem to me even further 
from completeness than they seemed then. However, I 
have reason to believe that the old book, incomplete as it 
was, proved useful to teachers ; and in its altered form it 
will, I hope, be found useful still. 

§ 2. It may be useful I think in two ways. 

First : it may lead some teachers to the study of the 
great thinkers on education. There are some vital truths 
which remain in the books which time cannot destroy. In 
the world as Goethe says are few voices, many echoes ; and 
the echoes often prevent our hearing the voices distinctly. 
Perhaps most people had a better chance of hearing the 



CONCLUSION. 505 



A growing science of education. 

voices when there were fewer books and no periodicals. 
Speakers properly so called cannot now be heard for the 
hubbub of the talkers ; and as literature is becoming more 
and more periodical our writers seem mostly employed like 
children on card pagodas or like the recumbent artists of 
the London streets who produce on the stones of the pave- 
ment gaudy chalk drawings which the next shower washes 
out. 

But if I would have fewer books what business have I to 
add to the number ? I may be told that — 

'* He who in quest of quiet, ' Silence ! ' hoots, 
" Is apt to malie the hubbub he imputes." 

My answer is that I do not write to expound my own 
thought, but to draw attention to the thoughts of the men 
who are best worth hearing. It is not given to us small 
people to think strongly and clearly like the great people ; 
we, however, gain in strength and clearness by contact with 
them ; and this contact I seek to promote. So long as this 
book is used, it will I hope be used only as an introduction 
to the great thinkers whose names are found in it. 

§ 3. There is another way in which the book may be of 
use. By considering the great thinkers in chronological 
order we see that each adds to the treasure which he finds 
already accumulated, and thus by degrees we are arriving 
in education, as in most departments of human endeavour, 
at a sciefice. In this science lies our hope for the future. 
Teachers must endeavour to obtain more and more know- 
ledge of the laws to which their art has to conform itself. 

§ 4. It may be of advantage to some readers if I point 
out briefly what seems to me the course of the main stream 
of thought as it has flowed down to us from the Renascenf.e. 



506 CONCLUSION. 



Jesuits the first Reformers. 



§ 5. As I endeavoured to show at the beginning of this 
book, the Scholars of the Renascence fell into a great 
mistake, a mistake which perhaps could not have been 
avoided at a time when literature was rediscovered and the 
printing press had just been invented. This mistake was 
the idolatry of books, and, still worse, of books in Latin 
and Greek. So the schoolmaster fell into a bad theory or 
conception of his task, for he supposed that his function 
was to teach Latin and Greek ; and his practice or way of 
going to work was not much better, for his chief implements 
were grammar and the cane. 

§ 6. The first who made a great advance were the 
Jesuits. They were indeed far too much bent on being 
popular to be " Innovators." They endeavoured to do 
well what most schoolmasters did badly. They taught 
Latin and Greek, and they made great use of grammar, but 
they gave up the cane. Boys were to be made happy. 
School-hours were to be reduced from 10 hours a day to 
5 hours, and in those 5 hours learning was to be made 
" not only endurable but even pleasurable." 

But the pupils were to find this pleasure not in the 
exercise of their mental powers but in other ways. As Mr. 
Eve has said, young teachers are inclined to think mainly 
of stimulating their pupils' minds and so neglect the repeti- 
tion needed for accuracy. Old teachers on the other hand 
care so much for accuracy that they require the same thing 
over and over till the pupils lose zest and mental activity 
The Jesuits frankly adopted the maxim " Repetition is the 
mother of studies," and worked over the same ground again 
and again. The two forces on which they relied for 
making the work pleasant were one good — the personal 
influence of the master (" boys will soon love learning when 



CONCLUSION. 507 



The Jesuits cared for more than classics. 

they love the teacher,") and one bad or at least doubtful — 
the spur of emulation. 

However, the attempt to lead, not drive, was a great step 
in the right direction. Moreover as they did not hold with 
the Sturms and Trotzendorfs that the classics in and for 
themselves were the object of education the Jesuits were able 
to think of other things as well. They were very careful of 
the health of the body. And they also enlarged the task of 
the schoolmaster in another and still more important way. 
To the best of their lights they attended to the moral and 
religious training of their pupils. It is much to the credit 
of the Fathers that though Plautus and Terence were 
considered very valuable for giving a knowledge of colloquial 
Latin and were studied and learnt by heart in the Protestant 
schools, the Jesuits rejected them on account of their 
impurity. The Jesuits wished the whole boy, not his 
memory only, to be affected by the master ; so the master 
was to make a study of each of his pupils and to go on 
with the same pupils through the greater part of their 
school course. 

The Jesuit system stands out in the history of education 
as a remarkable instance of a school system elaborately 
thought out and worked as a whole. In it the individual 
schoolmaster withered, but the system grew, and was, I may 
say is, a mighty organism. The single Jesuit teacher might 
not be the superior ofthe average teacher in good Protestant 
schools, but by their unity of action the Jesuits triumphed over 
their rivals as easily as a regiment of soldiers scatters a mob. 

§ 7. The schoolmastei's theory of the human mind made 
of it, to use Bartle Massey's simile, a kind of bladder fit 
only to hold what was poured into it. This pouring-in 
theory of education was first called in question by that 



508 CONCLUSION. 



Rabelais for "intuition." 



strange genius who seems to have stood outside all the 
traditions and opinions of his age, 

" holding no form of creed, 
But contemplating all." 

I mean Rabelais. 

Like most reformers, Rabelais begins with denunciations 
of the system established by use and wont. After an 
account of the school-teaching and school-books of the 
day, he says — "It would be better for a boy to learn 
nothing at all than to be taught such-like books by such-like 
masters." He then proposes a training in which, though 
the boy is to study books, he is not to do this mainly, but 
is to be led to look about him, and to use both his senses 
and his limbs. For instance, he is to examine the stars 
when he goes to bed, and then to be called up at four in 
the morning to find the change that has taken place. Here 
we see a trainmg of the powers of observation. These 
powers are also to be exercised on the trees and plants 
which are met with out-of-doors, and on objects within the 
house, as well as on the food placed on the table. The study 
of books is to be joined with this study of things, for the 
old authors are to be consulted for their accounts of what- 
ever has been met with. The study of trades, too, and the 
practice of some of them, such as wood-cutting, and carving 
in stone, makes a very interesting feature in this system. 
On the whole, I think we may say that Rabelais was the 
first to advocate training as distinguished from teaching ; 
and he was the father of Anschauungs-unterricht, teaching 
by intuition, i.e., by the pupil's own senses and the spring 
of his own intelligence. Rabelais would bestow much care 
on the body too. Not only was the pupil to ride and 
fence ; we find him even shouting for the benefit of his lungs. 



CONCLUSION. 509 



Montaigne for educating mind and body. 

§ 8. Rabelais had now started an entirely new theory of 
the educator's task, and fifty years afterwards his thought was 
taken up and put forward with incomparable vigour by the 
great essayist, Montaigne, Montaigne starts with a quotation 
from Rabelais — "The greatest clerks are not the wisest 
men," and then he makes one of the most effective 
onslaughts on the pouring-in theory that is to be found in 
all literature. His accusation against the schoolmasters of 
his time is twofold. First, he says, they aim only at giving 
knowledge, whereas they should first think of judgment and 
virtue. Secondly, in their method of teaching they do not 
exercise the pupils' own minds. The sum and substance 
of the charge is contained in these words — " We labour to 
stuff the memory and in the meantime leave the conscience 
and understanding impoverished and void." His notion of 
education embraced the whole man. " Our very exercises 
and recreations," says he, "running, wrestling, music, 
dancing, hunting, riding, fencing, will prove to be a good 
part of our study. I would have the pupil's outward 
fashion and mien and the disposition of his limbs formed 
at the same time with his mind. 'Tis not a soul, 'tis not 
a body, that we are training up, but a ;«a«, and we ought 
not to divide him." 

§ 9. Before the end of the fifteen hundreds then we see 
in the best thought of the time a great improvement in the 
conception of the task of the schoolmaster. Learning is 
not the only thing to be thought of Moral and religious 
training are recognised as of no less importance. And as 
" both soul and body have been created by the hand of 
God " (the words are Ignatius Loyola's), both must be 
thought of in education. When we come to instruction 
we find Rabelais recommending that at least part of it 



510 CONCLUSION. 



17th century reaction against books. 

should be " intuitive," and Montaigne requiring that the 
instruction should involve ,an exercise of the intellectual 
powers of the learner. But the escape even in thought 
from the Renascence ideal was but partial. Some of 
Rabelais' directions seem to come from a " Verbal Realist," 
and Montaigne was far from saying as Joseph Payne has 
said, " every act of teaching is a mode of dealing with 
mind and will be successful only in proportion as this 
is recognised," " teaching is only another name for mental 
training," But if Rabelais and Montaigne did not reach 
the best thought of our time they were much in advance of 
a great deal of our practice. 

§ 10. The opening of the sixteen hundreds saw a great 
revolt from the literary spirit of the Renascence. The 
exclusive devotion to books was followed by a reaction. 
There might after all be something worth knowing that 
books would not teach. Why give so much time to the 
study of words and so little to the observation of things ? 
" Youth," says a writer of the time, " is deluged with 
grammar precepts infinitely tedious, perplexed, obscure, and 
for the most part unprofitable, and that for many years." 
Why not escape from this barren region ? " Come forth, 
my son," says Comenius. " Let us go into the open air. 
There you shall view whatsoever God produced from the 
beginning and doth yet effect by nature." And Milton 
thus expresses the conviction of his day : " Because our 
understanding cannot in this body found itself but on 
sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of 
God and things invisible as by orderly conning over the 
visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily 
to be followed in all discreet teaching." 

This great revolution which was involved in the Baconian 



CONCLUSION. 5 1 1 



Reaction not felt in schools and UU. 

philosophy may be described as av turning from fancy to 
fact. All the creations of the human mind seemed to 
have lost their value. The only things that seemed worth 
studying were the material universe and the laws or 
sequences which were gradually ascertained by patient 
induction and experiment. 

§ II. Till the present century this revolution did not 
extend to our schools and universities. It is only within 
the last fifty years that natural science has been studied 
even in the University of Bacon and Newton. The Public 
School Commission of 1862 found that the curriculum was 
just as it had been settled at the Renascence. " But if the 
walls of these educational Jerichos were still standing this 
was not from any remissness on the part of " the children of 
light" in shouting and blowing with the trumpet. They 
raised the war-cry " Not words, but things ! " and the cry 
has been continued by a succession of eminent men against 
the schools of the 17th and i8th centuries and has at 
length begun to tell on the schools of the 19th. Perhaps 
the change demanded is best shown in the words of John 
Dury about 1649 : "The true end of all human learning is 
to supply in ourselves and others the defects which proceed 
from our ignorance of the nature and use of the creatures 
and the disorderliness of our natural faculties in using them 
and reflecting upon them." So the Innovators required 
teachers to devote themselves to natural science and to the 
science of the human mind. 

§ 12. The first Innovators, like the people of the fifteen 
hundreds, thought mainly of the acquisition of knowledge, 
only the knowledge was to be not of the classics but of the 
material world. In this they seem inferior to Montaigne 
who had given the first place to virtue and judgment. 



512 CONCLUSION. 



Comenius begins science of education. 

§ 13. But towards the middle of the sixteen hundreds 
a very eminent Innovator took a comprehensive view of 
education, and reduced instruction to its proper place, that 
is, he treated it as a part of education merely. This man, 
Comenius, was at once a philosopher, a philanthropist, and 
a schoolmaster; and in his writings we find the first attempt 
at a science of education. The outline of his science is as 
follows : — 

" We live a threefold life — a vegetative, an animal, and 
an intellectual or spiritual. Of these, the first is perfect in 
the womb, the last in heaven. He is happy who comes 
with healthy body into the world, much more he who goes 
with healthy spirit out of it. According to the heavenly 
idea a man should — ist, Know all things; 2nd, He should 
be master of things and of himself ; 3rd, He should refer 
everything to God. So that within us Nature has implanted 
the seeds of learning, of virtue, and of piety. To bring 
these seeds to maturity is *the object of education. All 
men require education, and God has made children unfit 
for other employment that they may have time to learn." 

Here we have quite a new theory of the educator's task. 
He is to bring to maturity the seeds of learning, virtue, 
and piety, which fire already sown by Nature in his pupils. 
This is quite different from the pouring-in theory, and seems 
to anticipate the notion of Froebel, that the educator should 
be called not teacher but gardeiier. But Comenius evi- 
dently made too much of knowledge. Had he lived two 
centuries later he would have seen the area of possible 
knowledge extending to infinity in all directions, and he 
would no longer have made it his ideal that "man should 
know all things." 

^14 The next great thinker about education — I mean 



CONCLUSION. 5 1 3 



Locke's teacher a disposer of influence. 

Locke— seems to me chiefly important from his having 
taken up the principles of Montaigne and treated the giving 
of knowledge as of very small importance. Montaigne, as 
we have seen, was the first to bring out clearly that educa- 
tion was much more than instruction, as the whole was 
greater than its part, and that instruction was of far less 
importance than some other parts of education. And this 
lies at the root of Locke's theory also. The great function 
of the educator, according to him, is not to teach, but to 
dispose the pupil to virtue first, industry next, and then 
knowledge ; but he thinks where the first two have been 
properly cared for knowledge will come of itself The 
following are Locke's own words : — " The great work of a 
governor is to fashion the carriage and to form the mind, 
to settle in his pupil good habits and the principles of virtue 
and wisdom, to give him little by little a view of mankind 
and work him into a love and imitation of what is excellent 
and praiseworthy j and in the prosecution of it to give him 
vigour, activity, and industry. The studies which he sets 
him upon are but, as it were, the exercise of his faculties 
and employment of his time ; to keep him from sauntering 
and idleness ; to teach him application and accustom him 
to take pains, and to give him some little taste of what 
his own industry must perfect."* So we see that Locke 

* This theory of the educator's task which makes him a disposer or 
director of influence rather than a teacher, led Locke to decry our 
public schools, for in them the traditions and tone of the school seem 
the source of influence, and the masters are to all appearance mainly 
teachers. Locke's own words are these: — "The difference is great 
between two or three pupils in the same house and three or four 
score boys lodged up and down ; for let the master's industry and 
skill be never so great, it is impossible he should have fifty or a hundred 



514 CONCLUSION. 



Locke and public schools. Escape from "idols." 

agrees with Comenius in his enlarged view of the educator's 
task, and that he thought much less than Comenius of the 
importance of the knowledge to be given. 

§ 15. We already see a gradual escape from the "idols " 
of the. Renascence. Locke, instead of accepting the learned 
ideal, declares that learning is the last and least thing to 
be thought of He cares little about the ordinary literary 
instruction given to children, though he thinks they must 
be taught something and does not know what to put in 
its place. He provides for the education of those who are 

schola'-p under his eye any longer than they are in the school together, 
nor can it be expected that he should instruct them successfully in any- 
thing but their books ; the forming of their minds and manners requiring 
a constant attention and particular application to eveiy single boy 
which is impossible in a numerous flock, and would be wholly in vain 
(could he have time to study and correct everyone's particular defects 
and wrong inclinations) when the lad was to be left to himself or the 
prevailing infection of his fellows the greatest part of the four-and-twenty 
hours." But the educator who considers himself a director of influences 
must remember that he is not the only force. The boy's companions 
are a force at least as great ; and if he were brought up in private on 
Locke's system, he would be entirely without a kind of influence much 
more valuable than Locke seems to think — the influence of boy com- 
panions, and of the traditions of a great school. On the other hand, it 
cannot be denied that our public schools used to be, and perhaps are 
still to some extent, under-mastered, and that the masters should not 
be the mere teachers which, from overwork and other causes, they often 
tend to become. The consequence has been that the real education of 
the boys has in a great measure passed out of their hands. What has 
been the result ? A long succession of able teachers have aimed at giving 
literary instruction and making their pupils classical scholars. Both 
manners and bodily training have been left to take care of themselves. 
Yet such is the irony of Fate that the majority of youths who le;\ve out 
great schools are not literary and are not much of classical scholars, but 
they are decidedly gentlemanly and still more decidedly athletic 



CONCLUSION. 515 



Rousseau's clean sweep. 



to remain ignorant of Greek, but only when they are "gentle- 
men." In this respect the van is led by Comenius, who 
thought of education for all, boys and girls, rich and poor, 
alike. Comenius also gave the first hint of the true nature 
of our task — to bring to perfection the seeds implanted by 
Nature. He also cared for the little ones whom the school- 
master had despised. Locke does not escape from a 
certain intellectual disdain of " my young masters," as he 
calls them ; but in one respect he advanced as far as the 
best thinkers among his successors have advanced. Know- 
ledge, he says, must come by the action of the learner's 
own mind. The true teacher is within. 

§ 16. We now come to the least practical and at the 
same time the most influential of all the writers on education 
— I mean Rousseau. He, like Rabelais, Montaigne, and 
Locke, was (to use Matthew Arnold's expression) a " child 
of the idea." He attacked scholastic use and wont not in 
the name of expedience, but in the name of reason ; and 
such an attack — so eloquent, so vehement, so uncompro- 
mising — had never been made before. 

Still there remained even in theory, and far more in 
practice, effects produced by the false ideal of the Renas- 
cence. This ideal Rousseau entirely rejected. He proposed 
making a clean sweep and returning to what he called the 
state of Nature. 

§ 17. Rousseau was by no means the first of the Re- 
formers who advocated a return to Nature. There has 
been a constant conviction in men's minds from the time 
of the Stoics onwards that most of the evils which afflict 
humanity have come from our not following " Nature." 
The cry of " Everything according to Nature " was soon 
raised by educationists. Ratke announced it as one of his 



5l6 CONCLUSION. 



Benevolence of Nature. Man disturbs. 

principles. Comenius would base all action on the analogy 
of Nature. Indeed, there has hardly ever been a system 
of education which did not lay claim to be the '' natural " 
system. And by " natural " has been always understood 
something different from what is usual. What is the notion 
that produces this antithesis ? 

§ 1 8. When we come to trace back things to their cause 
we are wont to attribute them to God, to Nature, or to 
Man. According to the general belief, God works in and 
through Nature, and therefore the tendency of things apart 
from human agency must be to good. This faith which 
underlies all our thoughts and modes of speech, has been 
beautifully expressed by Wordsworth — 

"A gracious spirit o'er this earth presides, 
And in the heart of man ; invisibly 
It comes to works of unreproved deh'ght 
And tendency benign ; directing those 
Who care not, know not, think not, what they do." 

Prelude, v, adf. 

But if the tendency of things is to good, why should the 
usual be in such strong contrast with " the natural"? Here 
again we may turn to Wordsworth. After pointing to the 
harmony of the visible world, and declaring his faith that 
" every flower enjoys the air it breathes," he goes on — 

" If this belief from heaven be sent., 
If this be Nature's holy plan. 
Have I not reason to lament, 
What Man has made of Man?" 

This passage might be taken as the motto of Rousseauism. 
According to that philosophy man is the great disturber and 
pen-erter of the natural order. Other animals simply follow 



CONCLUSION. 517 



We arrange sequences, capitalise ideas. 

nature, but man has no instinct, and is thus left to find his 
own way. What is the consequence? A very different 
authority from Rousseau, the poet Cowper, tells us in lan- 
guage which Rousseau might have adopted — 

" Reasoning at every step he treads, 
Man yet mistakes his way : 
While meaner things whom instinct leads. 
Are seldom known to stray." 

Man has to investigate the sequences of Nature, and to 
arrange them for himself. In this way he brings about a 
great number of foreseen results, but in doing this he also 
brings about perhaps even a greater number of unforeseen 
results ; and alas ! it turns out that many, if not most, of 
these unforeseen results are the reverse of beneficial. 

§ 19. Another thing is observable. Other animals are 
guided by instinct ; we, for the most part, are guided by 
tradition. Man, it has been said, is the only animal that 
capitalises his discoveries. If we capitalised nothing but 
our discoveries, this accumulation would be an immense 
advantage to us ; but we capitalise also our conjectures, our 
ideals, our habits, and unhappily, in many cases, our blun- 
ders,* So a great deal of action which is purely mischievous 

* I append a note written from a different point of view — " With 
how little wisdom ! " certainly seems to cover most departments of life. 
Seems ? Yes ; but are we not apt to overlook the wisdom that lies in the 
great mass of people ? In some small department we may have inves- 
tigated further than our class-mates, and may see, or think we see, a 
good deal of stupidity in what goes on. But in most matters we do not 
investigate for ourselves, but just do the usual thing ; and this seem.s to 
work all right. There must be a good deal of wisdom underlying the 
complex machinery of civilised life. Carlyle's " Mostly fools !" will by 
Qo means account for it. At times one has a dim perception that people 



5l8 CONCLUSION. 



Loss and gain from tradition. 



in its effects, comes not from our own mistakes, but from 
those of our ancestors. The consequence is, that what with 
our own mistakes and the mistakes we inherit, we sometimes 
go far indeed out of the course which " Nature " has pre- 
scribed for us. 

§ 20. The generation which found a mouthpiece in 
Rousseau had become firmly convinced, not indeed of its 

in general are not so stupid as they seem. Perhaps a long life would 
in the end lead us to say like Tithonus, 

" Why should a man desire in any way 
" To vary from the kindly race of men ? " 
There is a higher wisdom than the disintegrating individualism of 
Carlyle. Far better to believe with Mazzini in " the collective exist- 
ence of humanity," and remembering that we work in a medium fashioned 
for us by the labours of all who have preceded us, regard our collective 
powers as "grafted upon those of all foregoing humanity." (Mazzini's 
Essays: Carlyle.) This is the point of view to which Wordsworth 
would raise us : — 

"Among the multitudes 
" Of that huge city, oftentimes was seen 

" the unity of man, 

" One spirit over ignorance and vice 

"Predominant, in good and evil hearts ; 

" One sense for moral judgements, as one eye 

" For the sun's light. The soul when smitten thus 

" By a sublime idea, whence soe'er 

" Vouchsafed for union or communion, feeds 

" On the pure bliss and takes her rest with God." 

Prehide viij, adf, 
Tliough unable to share in "the pure bliss" of Wordsworth we may 
take refuge with Goethe in the thought that " humanity is the true man," 
and enjoy much to which we have no claim as individuals. Tradition, 
blind tradition, must rule our actions through by far the greatest part of 
our lives ; and seeing we owe it so much, we should be tolerant, even 
gratefuL 



CONCLUSION. 519 

Rousseau for observing and following. 

own stupidity, but of the stupidity of all its predecessors ; 
and the vast patrimony bequeathed to it seemed nothing 
but lumber or worse. So Rousseau found an eager and 
enthusiastic audience when he proposed a return to Nature, 
in other words, to give up all existing customs, and for the 
most part to do nothing and " give Nature a chance." His 
boy of twelve years old was to have been taught nothing. 
Up to that age the great art of education, says Rousseau, 
is to do everything by doing nothing. The first part of 
education should be purely negative. 

§ 21. Rousseau tlien was the first who escaped completely 
from the notion of the Renascence, that man was mainly a 
learning and remembering animal. But if he is not this, 
what is he? We must ascertain, said Rousseau, not a priori, 
but by observation. We need a new art, the art of observing 
children. 

§ 22. Now at length there was hope for the Science of 
Education. This science must be based on a study of the 
subject on whom we have to act. According to Locke 
there is such variation not only in the circumstances, but 
also in the personal peculiarities of individuals, that general 
laws either do not exist or can never be ascertained. But 
this variation is no less observable in the human body, and 
the art of the physician has to conform itself to a science 
which is still very far from perfect. The physician, however, 
does not despair. He carefully avails himself of such science 
as we now have, and he makes a study of the human body 
in order to increase that science. When a few more genera- 
tions have passed away, the medical profession will very 
likely smile at mistakes made by the old Victorian doctors. 
But, meantime, we profit by the science of medicine in its 
present state, and we find that this science has considerably 



520 CONCLUSION. 



Rousseau exposed "school learning." 

increased the average duration of human life. We there- 
fore require every practitioner to have made a scientific 
study of his calling, and to have had a training in both the 
theory and practice of it. The science of education cannot 
be said to have done much for us at present, but it will do 
more in the future, and might do more now if no one were 
allowed to teach before he or she had been trained in the 
best theory and practice we have. Since the appearance 
of the Emile the best educators have studied the subject 
on whom they had to act, and they have been learning 
more and more of the laws or sequences which affect the 
human mind and the human body. The marvellous strides 
of science in every other department encourages us to hope 
that it will make great advances in the field of education 
where it is still so greatly needed. Perhaps the day may 
come when a Pestalozzi may be considered even by his con- 
temporaries on an equality with a Napoleon, and the human 
race may be willing to give to the art of instruction the 
same amount of time, money, thought, and energy, which 
in our day have been devoted with such tremendous suc- 
cess to the art of destruction. It is already dawning on the 
general consciousness that in education as in physical 
science " we conquer Nature by obeying her," and we are 
learning more and more how to obey her. 

§ 23. Rousseau's great work was first, to expose the ab- 
surdities of the school-room, and second, to set the educator 
on studying the laws of nature in the human mind and 
body. He also drew attention to the child's restless 
activity. He would also (like Locke before him), make the 
young learner his own teacher. 

§ 24. There is another way in which the appearance of 
the Emile was, as the Germans say, " epoch-making." 



CONCLUSION. 521 



Function of "things" in education. 

From the time of the earliest Innovators, we have seen that 
" Things not Words," had been the war-cry of a strong 
party of Reformers. But things had been considered 
merely as a superior means of instruction. Rousseau first 
pointed out the intimate relation that exists between children 
and the material world around them. Children had till then 
been thought of only as immature and inferior men. Since 
his day an English poet has taught us that in some ways 
the man is far inferior to the child, " the things which we 
have seen we now can see no more," and that 

"nothing can bring back the hour 
'* Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower." 

Rousseau had not Wordsworth's gifts, but he, too, observed 
that childhood is the age of strong impressions from without 
and that its material surroundings affect it much more 
acutely than they will in after life. Which of us knows as 
much about our own house and furniture as our children 
know ? Still more remarkable is the sympathy children have 
with animals. If a cat comes into a room where there are 
grown people and also a child, which sees the cat first? which 
observes it most accurately ? Now, this intimate relation of 
the child with its surroundings plays a most important part 
in its education. The educator may, if so minded, ignore 
this altogether, and stick to grammar, dates, and county 
towns, but if he does so the child's real education will not 
be much affected by him. Rousseau saw this clearly, and 
wished to use " things " not for instruction but for educa- 
tion. Their special function was to train the senses. 

§ 25. Perhaps it is not too much to say of Rousseau that 
he was the first who gave up thinking of the child as a 
being whose chief faculty was the faculty of remembering, 



522 CONCLUSION. 



" New Education " started by Rousseau. 

and thought of him rather as a being who feels and reflects, 
acts and invents. 

§ 26 But if the thought may be traced back to Rousseau, 
it was, as left by him, quite crude or rather embryonic. 
Since his time this conception of the young has been taken 
up and moulded into a fair commencement of a science of 
education. This commencement is now occupying the 
attention of thinkers such as Herbert Spencer, and much 
may be expected from it even in the immediate future. 
For the science so far as it exists we are indebted mainly 
to the two Reformers with whom I will conclude — Pestalozzi 
and Froebel. 

§ 27. Pestalozzi, like Comenius more than 100 years 
before him, conceived of education for all. " Every human 
being," said he, " has a claim to a judicious development of 
his faculties." Every child must go to school. 

But the word school includes a great variety of institutions. 
The object these have in view differs immensely. With 
us the main object in some schools seems to be to prepare 
boys to compete at an early age for entrance scholarships 
awarded to the greatest proficients in Latin and Greek. In 
other schools the object is to turn the children out "good 
scholars " in another sense ; that is, the school is held to be 
successful when the boys and girls acquire skill in the arts 
of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and can remember a 
number of facts — facts of history, of geography, and even of 
natural science. So the common notion is that what is 
wanted in the way of education depends entirely on the 
child's social position. There still linger among us notions 
derived from the literary men of the Renascence. We still 
measure all children by their literary and mnemonic attain- 
ments. We still consider knowledge of Latin and Greek 



CONCLUSION. 523 

Drawing out. Man and the other animals. 

the highest kind of knowledge. Children are sent to school 
that they may not be ignorant.* Pestalozzi, who had 
studied Rousseau, entirely denied all this. He required 
that the school-coach should be turned and started in a 
new direction. The main object of the school was not to 
teach, but to develop, not to put in but to draw out. 

§ 28. The study of nature shows us that every animal 
comes into the world with certain faculties or capabilities. 
There are a set of circumstances which will develop these 
capabilities and make the most of them. There are other 
circumstances which would impede this development, 
decrease it, or even prevent it altogether. All other 
animals have this development secured for them by their 
ordinary environment : but Man, with far higher capacities, 
and with immeasurably greater faculties both for good and 
evil, is left far more to his own resources than the other 
animals. Placed in an almost endless variety of circum- 
stances we have to ascertain how the development of our 
offspring may best be brought about. We have to consider 
what are the inborn faculties of our children, and also what 
aids and what hinders their development. When we have 
arrived at this knowledge we must educate them by placing 

* Professor Jebb has lately given us the main ideas of the great 
Scholar Erasmus. " In all his work," says the Professor, "he had an 
educational aim. . . . The evils of his age, in Church, in State, in 
the daily lives of men, seemed to him to have their roots in ignoraiue ; 
ignorance of what Christianity meant, ignorance of what the Bible taught, 
ignorance of what the noblest and most gifted minds of the past, 
whether Christian or pagan, had contributed to the instruction of the 
human race." (Rede Lecture, 1890.) Erasmus evidently fell into the 
error against which Pestalozzi and Froebel lift up their voices, often in 
vain — the error of forgetting that knowledge is of no avail without in- 
telligence. What is the use of lighting additional candles for the blind 7 



524 CONCLUSION, 



Intuition. Man an organism, a doer and creator. 

them in the best circumstances in our power, and then 
superintending, judiciously and lovingly, the development of 
their faculties and of their higher nature. 

§ 29. There is, said Pestalozzi, only one way in which 
faculty can be developed, and that is by exercise ; so his 
system sought to encourage the activities of children, and in 
this respect he was surpassed, as we shall see, by Froebel. 
" Dead " knowledge, as it has been called — the knowledge 
commonly acquired for examinations, our school-knowledge, 
in fact — was despised by Pestalozzi as it had been by Locke 
and Rousseau before him. In its place he would put 
knowledge acquired by " intuition," by the spring of the 
learner's own intelligence. 

§ 30. The conception of every child as an organism and 
of education as the process by which the development of 
that organism is promoted is found first in Pestalozzi, but it 
was more consistently thought out by Froebel. There is, 
said Froebel, a divine idea for every human being, for we 
are all God's offspring. The object of the education of a 
human being is to further the development of his divine 
idea. This development is attainable only through action ; 
for the development of every organism depends on its self- 
activity. Self-activity then, activity " with a will," is the 
main thing to be cared for in education. The educator 
has to direct the children's activity in such a way that it 
may satisfy their instincts, especially the formative and 
creative instincts. The child from his earliest years is to be 
treated as a doer and even a creator. 

% 31. Now, at last, we have arrived at the complete 
antithesis between the old education and the New, The 
old education had one object, and that was learning. Man 
was a being who learnt and remembered. Education was a 



CONCLUSION. 525 



Antithesis of Old and New Education. 

process by which he learnt, at first the languages and 
literatures of Rome and Greece only ; but as time went on 
tlie curriculum was greatly extended. The New Education 
trea'^^s the human being not so much a learner as a doer and 
creator. The educator no longer fixes his eyes on the 
object — the knowledge, but on the subject— the being to be 
educated. The success of the education is not determined 
by what the educated knoiv, but by what they do and what 
they are. They are well educated when they love what is 
good, and have had all their faculties of mind and body 
properly developed to do it. 

§ 32. The New Education then is " passive, following," 
and must be based on the study of human nature. When 
vve have ascertained what are the faculties to be developed 
we must consider further how to foster the self-activity that 
will develop them. 

§ 33. We have travelled far from Dr. Johnson, who 
asserted that education was as well known as it ever could 
be. Some of us are more inclined to assert that in his day 
education was not invented. On the other hand, there are 
those who belittle the New Education and endeavour to 
show that in it there is nothing new at all. As it seems to 
me a revolution of the most salutary kind was made by the 
thinkers who proposed basing education on a study of the 
subject to be educated, and, more than this, making the 
process a "following" process with the object of drawing 
out self-activity. 

§ 34. This change of object must in the end be fruitful in 
changes of every kind. But as yet we are only groping our 
way ; and, if I may give a caution which, in this country at 
least, is quite superfluous, we should be cautious, ana till we 
see our way clearly we should try no great experiment that 



526 CONCLUSION. 



Drill needed. What the Thinkers do for us. 

would destroy our connexion with the past. Most of our 
predecessors thought only of knowledge. By a reaction 
some of our New Educationists seem to despise knowledge. 
But knowledge is necessary, and without some knowledge 
development would be impossible. We probably cannot 
do too much to assist development and encourage " intui- 
tion," but there is, perhaps, some danger of our losing sight 
of truths which schoolroom experience would bring home to 
us. Even the clearest " concepts " get hazy again and 
totally unfit for use, unless they are permanently fixed in 
the mind by repetition, which to be effective must to some 
extent take the form of drill. The practical man, even the 
crammer, has here mastered a truth of the teaching art 
which the educationist is prone to overlook. And there are, 
no doubt, other things which the practical man can teach. 
But the great thinkers would raise us to a higher standing- 
point from which we may see much that will make the right 
road clearer to us, and lead us to press forward in it with 
good heart and hope. 



FINIS. 



APPENDIX. 



History of this Book. — Some wise man has advised U3 never to 
find fault with ourselves, for, sa3's he, you may always depend on your 
friends to do it for you. So, having looked through the proofs of this 
book, I abstain from fault-finding. I fancy I could find fault more 
effectively than my friends or even my professional critics. As the 
Spectator's "Correspondent in an easy chair" says very truly, the 
author has read his book many times ; the critic has read it at most once. 
In fact the critic gives to the book (in some cases to the subject of the 
book also) no greater number of hours than the author has given months, 
perhaps years. Partiality blinds the author, no doubt, but unless he is 
a fatuous person it does not blind him so much as his haste blinds the 
critia An author of note said of a book of his, which had been much 
criticised: "The book has faults, but I am the only person who has 
discovered them," to which a friend maliciously appended: " Yo\ faults 
read merits." Whatever was the truth here, I am inclined to think 
the author has the best chance of putting his finger on the weak 
places. 

But if I see weaknesses in the foregoing book, why do I not make it 
better? Just for two reasons : to improve the book I should have to 
spend more time on it and more money. The more I read and think 
about any one of my subjects, the more I want to go on reading and 
thinking. Perhaps I hear of an old book that has escaped my notice, 
or a new book comes out, sometimes an important book like Pinloche's 
Basedow. So I can never finish an essay to my satisfaction, and the 
only way of getting it off my hands is to send the copy to the printer. 
By the time the proof comes in there is something that I should lil:e to 
add or alter ; but then the dread of a long bill for "corrections " lestrains 
me. However, now the book is all in type, I see here and there some- 
thing that suggests a note by way of explanation or addition, so I add 
this appendix. Taking a hint from one of my favourite authors, Sir 
Arthur Helps, I throw my notes into the form of a dialogue, but 



528 APPENDIX. 

being entirely destitute of Helps's drama'.ic skill I confine myself to 
E. (the Essayist) and A. (Amicus), who is only too clearly an alter ego. 
A. So the Americans have kept alive your old Ixiok for you, and at 
last you have rewritten it. You at least have no reason to complain 
that there is no international copyright. Your book would have been 
forgotten long ago if a lady in Cincinnati had not persuaded an American 
publisher there to reprint it. E. Yes, I very readily allow that I have 
been a gainer. The Americans have done more for me than my own 
countrymen. To be sure neither have "praised with the hands" (as 
yidiihxo's professeur has it) ; and, in money at least, the book has never 
paid me its expenses ; but three American publishers have done for 
themselves what no Englishman would do for me, viz., publish at their 
own risk. In 1868 when my MS. was ready, I went to my old friend, 
Mr. Alexander Macmillan ; but he would not even look at it. " Books 
on education," said he, "don't pay. Why there is Thring's Edncation 
and School, a capital book " (I assented heartily, for I was very fond of 
it), " well, that doesn't sell." I was forced to admit that in that case I 
had little chance. " But," I said, " I suppose you would publish at 
my risk ?" " No," said Mr. Macmillan. " The author is never satisfied 
when his book doesn't pay." "What would you advise?" I asked. 
" I'll give you a letter of introduction to Mr. William Longman," said 
Mr. Macmillan ; " I dare say he'll publish for you." With this letter I 
went to Mr. William Longman (who has since those days been gathered 
to his ancestors, formerly of Paternoster Row). Mr. Longman said he 
would put the MS. in the hands of his reader. If the reader's report 
was favourable the firm would offer me terms ; if not, they would pub- 
ish for me on commission. I sent the MS. accordingly, and soon after 
I had a letter from the firm ofiering to publish "on commission." 
When the book was in type, Mr. Longman advised me to have only 
500 printed, and to publish at a high price. " I should charge 9^.," he 
said. "Very few people will buy, and they won't consider the price." 
This was not my opinion, but in such a matter I felt that the weight o 
authority was enormously against me. So I consented to the publish' 
ing price of 7^. bd. And at first it seemed that Mr. Longman was 
right — at least about the small number of purchasers. ;^30 was spent 
in advertising, and the book was very generally and I may say very 
favourably reviewed ; but when about 100 copies had been sold, it 
almost entiiely ceased " to move." I think 13 copies were sold in six 
moriths. So to get rid of the remainder of my 500 copies (some 300 
of ihem) I put down the price to 3^. 6i/. Then it seemed that Ma 



APPENDIX. 529 

Longman had made a mistake about the price. Without another 
advertisement the 300 were sold in a month or two. Some time after, 
I heard that the book had been republished in Cincinnati, and on my 
writing to the publishers, Messrs. Robert Clarke & Co., they presented 
me with half-a-dozen copies. This proved to be a perfect reprint, 
which is more than I can say of those which years afterwards weie 
issued by Mr. Bardeen and Messrs. Kellogg. I have therefore from 
time to time purchased from Messrs. Clarke and imported the copies 
(I suppose about 1500 in all) that have been wanted for the English 
market. I hope these details do not bore you. A. Not at all. The 
history of any book interests me, and your book has had some odd 
experiences. It has lived, I own, much longer than I expected, and 
for this you have to thank the Americans. A. In my case the absence 
of international copyright has done no harm certainly ; but after all 
copyright has itsadvantages, international copyright included. Specialists 
suffer severely from the want of it. Perhaps the " special " public in 
this country is so small that an important book for it cannot be published. 
If to our special public were joined the special public of the U.S., the 
book might be fairly remunerative to its author. Take, «.^., Joseph 
Payne's writings. These would have been lost to the world had not 
Dr. Payne published them as an act of filial piety. With an inter- 
national copyright these works would be very good property. E. You 
think then that in the long run "honesty is the best policy " even 
internationally? A. I must say my opinion does incline in that 
direction. 

Class Matches (p. 42). — A. I think you have had a good deal to 
do with class matches ? E. Yes. One must be careful not to overdo 
them, but I have found an occasional match a capital way of en- 
livening school-work. Some time before the match takes place the 
master lets the two best boys pick up sides, the second boy having the 
first choice. The subject for the match is then arranged, and to prevent 
disputes the area must be carefully defined. Moreover, there must ]« 
no opportunity for the boys to ask questions about unimportant details 
that are likely to have escaped attention. When the match is to fake 
pi xce each boy should come provided with a set of written questions, 
and whenever a boy shows himself ignorant of the righ answer to a 
question of his own he must be held to have failed even if his opponent 
is ignorant also. At Harrow, where I had a class-room ("school- 
room " as it is there called) to myself, I used to work these matches 
very oticcessfully in German. Say Heine's Lorelei had been learnt by 
■7T 



530 APPENDIX. 

heart. I set as a subject for a match the plurals of the substantives and 
the past participles of the verbs in the poem. Or the boys had to make 
up for themselves and number on paper a set of short sentences in 
which only words which occurred in the poem were used. In this last 
rase the questioner handed in to the master his paper with both the 
English and the German on it, and the master gave the other iiJe the 
English, of which they had to write the German. The details of S'jch 
matches may of course be varied to any extent so long as the subject 
set is quite definite. The scoring will be found best at the lower end, 
so that a match stimulates those who need stimulus. A. WTiat did you 
call " scratch pairs ?" E. Oh, that was a device for getting up a little 
harmless excitement. Knowing the capacities of my boys, I arranged 
them in pairs, the best boy and the worst forming one pair, the next 
best and next worst the second pair, &c., &c. I then asked a series of 
questions to which all had to write short answers. I then looked over 
the answers and marked them. Finally the marks of each pair were 
added together, and I announced the order in which the pairs " came 
in." It was really "anybody's race" for neither I nor anyone could 
predict the result. If the number of boys was an odd number the boy 
in the middle fought for his own hand and had his marks doubled. 
Perhaps on the whole he had the best chance. 

Competition. — A. There were then some forms of emulation 
which you did not set your face against ? E. There were many, but I 
preferred emulation which stimulated the idle rather than the 
industrious. Most " prizes " act only on those who would be better 
without them. A. Do you see no danger in encouraging rivalry 
between different bodies ? The strife between parties has often been 
more virulent than the strife between individuals. E. Yes, I know 
well that in exciting party-feeling one is playing with edged tool^ ; 
and besides this, a boy who for any cause is thought a disgrace to his 
side, is very likely to be bullied by it. Let me tell you of one form of 
stimulus which seemed to work well and was free from most of the 
objections you are thinking of. When I had a small school of my own in 
which there were only young boys, I put up in the school-room a Hk 
of the boys' names in alphabetical order with blank spaces after the 
names. I looked over the boys' written work very carefully, and 
whenever I came across any written exercise evidently done with great 
painstaking and for that boy with more than ordinary success, I marked 
it with a G, and I put up the G in one of the spaces after that boy'j 
name in the list hung up in the school-room. When the scHooJ 



APPENDIX. 531 

collectively had obtained a fixed number of G's we had an extra half- 
holiday. The announcement of a G was therefore always hailed with 
delight. A. I see one thing in favour of that device. You might by 
a G give encouragement to a boy when he has just begun to try. This 
is often a turning-point in a boy's life ; and a master's early recognition 
of effort may do much to strengthen into a habit what might, without 
the recognition, have proved nothing but a passing whim. At the ver^ 
least, all such devices have one good effect ; they break the monotony 
of school-work ; and monotony is much more wearing to the young 
than it is to their elders. Can you tell me of others who have used 
such plans ? E. A friend of mine who has a genius for inventing 
school plans of all kinds and marvellous energy in working them, has a 
boarding-house in connexion with a large school. The marks of every 
boy in the school are given out for each week. My friend gives a 
supper at the end of the quarter if the average marks of his house 
come up to a certain standard. He puts up each week a list of 
" Furtherers," i.e., of the boys who have surpassed the average, and of 
"Hinderers," i.e., of boys who have fallen below it. A. No doubt 
this is an effective spur, but I should fear it would in practice deliver 
the hindermost to Satan. The boy whom nature has made a 
" hinderer " is likely to have by no means a good time in that house. 
Do you know if such devices as you have mentioned are common in 
schools ? E. I really can't say. I have seen in American school papers 
accounts of class matches. In the New England Journal of Education 
(22nd November, 1S88) Mr. A. E. Winship gave an account of some 
inter-class matches at Milwaukee. There is a match between three 
classes, say in penmanship. If there are seventy boys in the three 
classes together, each boy draws a number from one to seventy, and 
puts not his name "but his number on his paper. The same lesson is set 
for all. The papers are collected, divided into three equal heaps, and 
looked over and marked by three masters. Finally the average of each 
class is taken. In mental arithmetic each class chooses its own 
champions. This would be fun, but would do nothing for the lower end 
of the class. The principal of McDonough School No. 12, New 
Orhans, Mr. H. E. Chambers, gives an account in the New York 
School Journal (8th December, 18S8), how he organised sixteen boys 
into teams of four, putting the best and worst together as I did in 
making up scratch pairs. The match between these teams was to see 
which could get the best record for the month. As Mr. Chambers tells 
us the sharper boys managed with more success than the mastar to let 



532 APPENDIX. 

light into the dull intellects of boys in the same team with them. 
This union of interests between the " strong " and the " weak " as the 
French call them, is a very good feature in combats of sides. 

The Jesuits. — A. What is it that interests you so much in the 
lesuits? E. Two things. First, the Jesuit shows the effects o'' .» 
definitely planned and rigidly carried out system of education ; and 
next, in such a society you find a continuity of effort which is and must 
be wanting in the life of an individual. If ever " we feel that we are 
greater than we know " it is when we can think of ourselves as parts of 
a society, a society which existed long before us, and will last after us. 
For instance, it is a great thing to be connected with an historical 
school such as Harrow. We then realise, as the school's poet, Mr. 
E. E. Bowen, has said, that we are no mere "sons of yesterday," and 
thinking of the connection between the mighty dead and the old school 
we join heartily in the chorus of the school song : — 

" Their glory thus shall circle us 
"Till time be done." 

A. I verily believe you expect your share in this "glory" for 
having invented the Harrow " Blue Book," which is likely to outlive 
Educational Reformers; but if the boys ever thought of the inventor 
(which they don't) they would naturally suppose that he was some 
contemporary of Cadmus or Deucalion. Sic trafisii ! But what has 
this to do with the Jesuits ? E. Only this, that by corporate life you 
secure a continuity of effort. There is to me something very attractive 
in the idea of a teaching society. How such a society might capitalise 
its discoveries ! The Roman Church has shown a genius for such 
societies, witness the Jesuits and the Christian Brothers. The 
experience of centuries must have taught them much that we could 
learn of them. A. The Jesuits seem to me to be without the spirit of 
investigators and discoverers. The rules of their Society do not permit 
of their learning anything or forgetting anything. Ignatius Loyola was 
a wonderful man, but he must have l.een superhuman if he could 
le'^islate for all time. By the way, I see you say the first edition of the 
A'a.'/o was published in 1585. What is your authority? E. I took 
the date from the copy in the British Museum. According to a volume 
published by Rivingtons in 1838 {Constihitiones Societatis Jesu) the 
Constifiilions were first printed in 1558, but were not divulged till " the 
celebrated suit of the MM. Lionel and Father La Valette " in 1761, 

Alexander's Doctrinale (p. 80).— A. I thought you made it a rule 
to give only what was useful. What can be the use of the quotationf 



APPENDIX. 533 

which your old Appendix contained " from a celebrated grammar written 
by a Franciscan of Brittany about the middle of the 13th century " ? 
E. Perhaps I had an attack of antiquarianism ; but I rather think the 
quotations were given in order to shew our progress since those days. 
The Teachers' art of making easy things difficult is well exemplified in 
Alexander's rules for the first declension. But life is shcrt, and folly is 
best forgotten. 

Lily's Grammar (p. 80). A. Would not your last remark rule out 
what you told us about Lily's Grammar? E. As regards Lily's 
assertion, " Genders of nouns be 7," it certainly would. Surely nobody 
but a writer of school-books would ever have thought of making a 
"gender " out of " hie, hasc, hoc, felix " ! But the absurdity did not 
originate with Lily. He was all for simplification, and though there 
were some changes in the Eton Latin Grammar which succeeded the 
" Short introduction of Grammar " known as Lily's Grammar, these 
changes were, some of them at least, by no means improvements. The 
old book put a before all ablatives and taught that " by a kingdom " 
was a regno. If this was not any better than teaching that domino by 
itself was " by a Lord," it was at least no worse. The optative of the 
old book (" Utinam si>n I pray God I be ; Utinam Essein would God 
I were, &c.") and the subjunctive (" Cum Sim When I am,&c.,") were 
better than the oracular statement which perplexed my youth, "The sub- 
junctive mood is declined like the potential." How often I said those 
words, and being of an inquiring mind wondered what on earth " the 
subjunctive mood " was ! 

Colet. E. The passage I refer to on page 80 from Colet is in a 
little book in the B.M. It is "JoannisColeti theologi, olim Decani Divi 
Fauli, editio, una cum quibusdam G. Lilii Grammatices Rudimentis, &c. 
AntuerpijE 1535. After the accidence of the eight parts of speech, he 
says : — " Of these eight parts of speech in order well construed, be 
made reasons and sentences, and long orations. But how and in what 
manner, and with what constructions of words, and all the varieties, 
and diversities, and changes in Latin speech (which be innumerable), if 
any man will know, and by that knowledge attain to understand Latin 
books, and to speak and to write clean Latin, let him, above all, busily 
learn and read good Latin authors of chosen poets and orators, and note 
wisely how they wrote and spake ; and study always to follow them, 
desiring none other rules but their examples. For in the beginning men 
spake not Latin because such rules were made, but, contrariwise, because 
men spake such Latin, upon that followed the rules, and were made. 



534 APPENDIX. 

That is to say, Latin speech was before the rules, and not the rules 
before the Latin speech. Wherefore, vvell-beloved masters and teachers 
of grammar, after the parts of speech sufficiently known in our schools, 
read and expound plainly unto your scholars good authors, and show to 
them [in] every word, and in every sentence, what they shall note and 
observe, warning them busily to follow and do like both in writing and 
in speaking ; and be to them your own self also speaking with them the 
pure Latin very present, and leave the rules ; for reading of good books, 
diligent information of learned masters, studious advertence and taking 
heed of learners, hearing eloquent men speak, and finally, busy imitation 
with tongue and pen, moreavaileth shortly to get the true eloquent speech, 
than all the traditions, rules, and precepts of masters." This passage is, 
I find, well known. It is given in Knights' Life of Colet and is referred 
to by Mr. Seebohm. Mr. J. H. Lupton, Colet's latest biographer, has 
kindly corrected the date for me : it is indistinct in the Museum copy. 

Mulcaster for English (p. 97). A. Except in Clarke's edition, 
your extracts from Mulcaster's Elementarie have been omitted by your 
American reprinters. E. So I see. I should have thought the 
Americans would have been much interested by this early praise of our 
common language. The passage is certainly a very remarkable one. 
and Professor Masson has thought it worth quoting in his Life of 
Milton. The Elementarie is a scarce book ; so I will not follow my 
reprinters in leaving out this passage : — " Is it not a marvellous bondage 
to become servants to one tongue, for learning's sake, the most part of 
our time, with loss of most time, whereas we may have the very same 
treasure in our own tongue with the gain of most time ? our own 
bearing the joyful title of our liberty and freedom, the Latin tongue 
remembering us of our thraldom and bondage ? I love Rome, but 
London better ; I favour Italy, but England more : I honour the Latin, 
but I worship the English. ... I honour foreign tongues, but wish 
my own to be partaker of their honour. Knowing them, I wish my own 
tongue to resemble their grace. I confess their furniture, and wish it were 
ours. . . . The diligent labour of learned countrymen did so enrich 
chose tongues, and not the tongues themselves ; though they proved very 
pliable, as our tongue will prove, I dare assure it, of knowledge, if our 
learned countrymen will put to their labour. And why not, I pray you, 
as well in English as either Latin or any tongue else ? Will ye say it is 
needless ? sure that will not hold. If loss of time, while ye be pilgrims 
to learning, by lingering about tongues be no argument of need ; if lack 
of sound skill while the tongue distracteth sense more than half to itsel/ 



APPENDIX. 535 

»nd that most of all in a simple student or a silly wit, be no argument 
of need, then ye say somewhat which pretend no need. But because 
we needed not to lose any time unless we listed, if we had such a 
vantage, in the course of study, as we now lose while we travail io 
tongues ; and because our understanding also were most full in our 
natural speech, though we know the foreign exceedingly well — methink 
necessity itself doth call for English, whereby all that gaiety may be had 
at home which makes us gaze so much at the fine stranger." Among 
various objections to the use of English which he answers, he comes to 
this one : — " But will ye thus break off the common conference with the 
learned foreign?" To this his answer is not very forcible: — "The 
conference will not cease while the people have cause to interchange 
dealings, and without the Latin it may well be continued : as in some 
countries the leameder sort and some near cousins to the Latin itself do 
already wean their pens and tongues from the use of the Latin, both 
in written discourse and spoken disputation, into their own natural, and 
yet no dry nurse being so well appointed by the milch nurse's help. " 
Further on he says : — " The emperor Justinian said, when he made the 
Institutes of force, that the students were happy in having such a fore- 
deal [i.e., advantage — German Vortheil] as to hear him at once, and 
not to wait four years first. And doth not our languaging hold us back 
four years and that full, think you ? . . [But this is not all.] Our 
best understanding is in our natural tongue, and all our foreign learning 
is applied to our use by means of our own ; and without the application 
to particular use, wherefore serves learning ? . . , [As for dis- 
honouring antiquity], if we must cleave to the eldest and not the best, we 
should be eating acorns and wearing old Adam's pelts. But why not 
all in English, a tongue of itself both deep in conceit and frank in 
delivery ? I do not think that any language, be it whatsoever, is better 
able to utter all arguments either with more pith or greater plainness 
than our English tongue is. . . . It is our accident which restrains 
our tongue and not the tongue itself, which will strain with the strongest 
and stretch to the furthest, for either government if we were conquerors, 
cr for cunning if we were treasurers ; not any whit behind either the 
subtle Greek for crouching close, or the stately Latin for spreading 
fair." 

Marcel's "Axiomatic Truths." — A. I have seen Marcel referred 
to as a great authority in education, but I look in vain for his name in 
Kiddle's Cyclopaedia and in Sonnenschein's. E. You would be more 
successful in Buisson's. There I see that Claude Marcel was born at 



53^ APPENDIX. 

Paris in 1793, ^^^ died in 1876. He was one of Napoleon's soldiers. 
After 40 years' absence from France dating from 1825 he went back to 
Paris. He had been French Consul ai Cork, and brought up nine 
children whom he taught entirely himself. In 1853 he published with 
Chapman and Hall his Language as a Means of Mental Culture (2 
vols.). This book was not very well named, for it contains in fact an 
analysis of the subject — education. To the study of this subject Marcel 
must have given his life, and it seems odd that his contribution to 
English (not French) pedagogic literature is so little known. A French 
abridgment of his work appeared in 1855 with the title Premiers 
Principes ct Education ; and in 1867 he published in French V Etudes 
des Languages (Paris, Borrani) of which a translation was published in 
the U.S.A. Marcel's notion of education is threefold, viz.. Physical, 
Intellectual, and Moral Education : the ist aimmg at health, strength, 
and beauty ; the 2nd at mental power and the acquisition of kitowledge ; 
the 3rd at piety, justice, goodness, and wisdom. According to him the 
Creator has made the exercise of our faculties pleasurable. This will 
suggest his main lines. He expects to find general assent, for he quotes 
from Garrick : — 

" When Doctrine meets with general approbation, 
"It is not heresy but reformation." 

But he has met with less approbation than neglect. His " axiomatic 
truths " that I quoted in the old appendix were abused without mercy 
by a critic of those days who accused me of " bookmaking" for putting 
them in. On the other hand my last American reprinter singles them 
out for honour and puts them at the beginning of the book. After this 
I suppose somebody likes them, so here they are : 

"Axiomatic Truths of Methodology. — i. The method of nature 
is the archetype of all methods, and especially of the method of learning 
languages. 

2. The classification of the objects of study should mark out to 
Itacher and learner their respective spheres of action. 

3. The ultimate objects of the study should always be kept in view, 
that the end be not forgotten in pursuit of the means. 

4. The means ought to be consistent with the end. 

5. Example and practice are more efficient than precept and theory. 

6. Only one thing should be taught at one time ; and an accumulation 
of difficulties should be avoided, especially in the beginning of the 
study. 

7. Instruction should proceed from the known to the unknown, from 



APPENDIX. 537 

the simple to the complex, from concrete to abstract notions, from 
analysis to synthesis. 

8. The mind should be impressed with the idea before it takes 
cognisance of the sign that represents it. 

9. The development of the intellectual powers is more important 
»han the acquisition of knowledge ; each should be made auxiliary to 
Uie other. 

10. All the faculties should be equally exercised, and exercised in a 
way consistent with the exigencies of active life. 

11. The protracted exercise of the faculties is injurious : a change of 
occupation renews the energy of their action. 

12. No exercise should be so difficult as to discourage exertion, nor 
so easy as to render it unnecessary : attention is secured by making 
study interesting. 

13. First impressions and early habits are the most important, because 
they are the most enduring. 

14. What the learner discovers by mental exertion is better known 
than what is told him. 

15. Learners should not do with their instructor what they can do by 
themselves, that they may have time to do with him what they cannot 
do by themselves. 

16. The monitorial principle multiplies the benefits of public in- 
struction. By teaching we learn. 

17. The more concentrated is the professor's teaching, the more 
comprehensive and efficient his instruction. 

18. In a class the time must be so employed that no learner shall 
be idle, and the business so contrived, that learners of different degrees 
of advancement shall derive equal advantage from the instructor. 

19. Repetition must mature into a habit what the learner wishes to 
remember. 

20. Young persons should be taught only what they are capable of 
clearly understanding, and what may be useful to them in after-life." 

A. What do you think of these ? E. I confess they bring into my 
mind the advice given to a learner in billiards : " When in doubt 
cannon and pocket the red." First catch your " Method of Nature," 
as Mrs. Glass might have said. As to No. 10 again, who shall say 
what "all the faculties" are? And is smelling a faculty that must be 
equally exercised with seeing ? When the young Marcels went to 
Paris I fancy they found there far more that was worth seeing 
than worth smelling. A. After what you have said about pupil- 



538 APPENDIX. 

teachers I infer you do not advocate the "monitorial principle"? 
E. Not exactly. " By teaching we learn." This is very true. But 
if we can't teach we can't learn by teaching. A. But may we not 
gain by trying to teach ? And short of teaching a good deal may be 
done by monitors. E. If by the monitorial principle we mean "En- 
courage the young to make themselves useful " it is a capital principle. 

Words and Things. — A. In your Sturm Essay you say : "The 
schoolmaster's art always has taken, and I suppose, in the main, always 
will take for its material the means of expression. " Surely the signs of 
the times do not indicate this. Have not the tongue and the pen had 
their day, and is not the schoolmaster turning his attention from them, 
not perhaps to the brain, but certainly to the eye and the hand ? It has 
at length occurred to him to ask like Shylock " Hath not a boy eyes? 
Hath not a boy hands?" And as it seems certain that the boy has 
these organs, the schoolmaster wants to find employment for them. 
Till now no scholastic use has been found for the eye except reading, or 
for the hand except making strokes with the pen and receiving them 
from the cane. But it will be different in the future. Words have had 
their day. Things will have theirs. E. You may be right ; but be 
careful in your use of terms. As is usually the case with " cries," if we 
want a meaning we may take ovit choice. The contrast between 
"words "and "things "is sometimes between studies like grammar, 
logic, and rhetoric on the one hand, and, on the other, Realien, studies 
which in some way have Things for their subject. Then again we have 
words as the vocal or visible symbols of ideas contrasted with the ideas 
themselves. Those who f.omplain of the time spent on words are thinking, 
some of them, of the time spent on the art of expression, others of the 
time given to symbols which do not, to the learner, symbolize anything. 
But in our day Words and Things are supposed to represent the study 
of literature and the study of natural science. At present there is a rage 
for Things, but it is a little early to adjudicate on the comparative claims 
of, say Homer and James Watt, on the gratitude of mankind. The 
great book of our day on Education, Herbert Spencer's, would make 
short work with "words"; and yet two School Commissions, the 
Public Schools Commission of 1862, and the Middle Schools Commission 
of 1867 have defended "words." The first of these says : " Grammar 
is the logic of common speech, and there are few educated men who are not 
sensible of the advantages they gained, as boys, from the steady practice of 
composition and translation, and from their introduction to etymology. 
The study of literature is the study, not indeed of the physical, but of the 



APPENDIX. 539 

Intellectual and moral world we live in, and of the thougnts, lives, and 
characters of those men whose writings or whose memories succeeding 
generations have thought it worth while to preserve." The Commis- 
sioners on Middle Schools express a similar opinion : — "The 'human' 
suljjects of instruction, of which the study of language is the beginning, 
appear to have a distinctly gr'^ater educational power than the 'material.' 
As all civilisation really takes its rise in human intercourse, so the most 
efficient instrument of education appears to be the study which most bears 
on that intercourse, the study of human speech. Nothing appears to 
develop and discipline the whole man so much as the study which 
assists the learner to understand the thoughts, to enter into the feelings, 
to appreciate the moral judgments of others. There is nothing so 
opposed to true cultivation, nothing so unreasonable, as excessive 
narrowness of mind ; and nothing contributes to remove this narrowness 
so much as that clear understanding of language which lays open 
th*; thoughts of others to ready appreciation. Nor is equal clearness 
of thought to be obtained in any other way. Clearness of thought 
is bound up with clearness of language, and the one is impossible 
without the other. When the study of language can be followed by that 
of literature, not only breadth and clearness, but refinement becomes 
attainable. The study of history in the full sense belongs to a still later 
age : for till the learner is old enough to have some appreciation ol 
politics, he is not capable of grasping the meaning of what he studies. 
But both literature and history do but carry on that which the study of 
language has begun, the cultivation of all those faculties by which man 
has contact with man." (Middle Schools Report, vol. i, c. iv, p. 22.) 
As Matthew Arnold says, in comparing two things it is "a kind of 
disadvantage" to be totally ignorant about one of them ; and I labour 
under this disadvantage in comparing literature and science. But I 
own I do not expect the ultimate victory will be with those who 
may kill, or even cure or carry, the body, and after that have no more 
that they can do. Milton says of fine music, that it " brings all 
heaven before our eyes." Similarly fine literature can at least bring all 
earth and its inhabitants, and the best thoughts and actions the world 
has known. I remember Matthew Arnold in conversation dwelling on 
the diffLirence it makes to us what we read. Surely one of the great 
things education should do is to enable and to accustom the thoughts of the 
young to follow the guidance which is offered us in "the words of the 
wise." 
Seneca v, Comenius. — A. I like your quotation on p. 169 from 



540 APPENDIX. 

Dr. John Brown. After your see-saw fashion, you have, in a note on 
?• 365, expressed a fondness for "a notion of the whole." E. I am 
there thinking of mimite instruction about parts. But in most things 
notions of the parts precede the notion of the whole ; and in this 
matter I think Seneca was wiser than Comenius : " More easily are 
we led through the parts into a conception of the whole. Facilius per 
partes in cognitionem totius adducimur." (Ep, 88, I.) A. May I 
ask to whom you are indebted for this erudition? E. To Wueste- 
mann. (Promptitariiim. Gotha, 1856.) 

Useful Knov^Iedg^e. — A. I am inclined to think that now and then 
you do not attach sufficient importance to the possession of knowledge 
and skill. E. Perhaps I do not. What I wish to cultivate is, not 
so much knowledge as the desire for knowledge, and further, the activity 
of mind that will turn knowledge to account. Knowledge driven in 
from without, so to speak, and skill obtained by enforced practice are, 
I will not say valueless, but very different in quality from the knowledge 
and skill that their possessor has sought for. Knowledge is a tool. He 
who has acquired it without caring for it, will have neither the skill nor 
the will to use it. A. Does not this apply to the knowledges recom- 
mended by Herbert Spencer, knowledge how to bring up children, &c., 
and to the knowledge of physiological facts and rules of health which 
you yourself say would be "of great practical value" (p. 444)? E. 
Certainly it does, and also to the "domestic economy" of our Board 
schools ; still more to the lessons in morality which it seems are, at 
least in France if not elsewhere, to supersede religion. If you can get 
the learners to care for such lessons, the lessons are worth giving ; if 
not, not. Care, not for the thing, but for the examination in the thing, 
is different, and can produce only a very inferior article. I expect there 
are instances in which care for the examination develops into care for 
the subject of the examination ; but these cases are so rare that they 
may be neglected. A. I see you would not take a deep interest in 
the " Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." And yet how 
terrible are the results of ignorance I Herbert Spencer is great ou 
knowledge for earning a livelihood. It would add, perhaps, three or 
four shillings a week to the wages of the working man if his wife had 
learnt to cook. In matters of food the waste from ignorance among the 
English poor is appalling. E. In this case the school might do much, 
as girls would be anxious to learn. And though we cannot lay down 
as a general rule that it is "never too late to learn," this rule might 
be applied to cooking. I see that in Govan, a suburb of Glasgow, the 



APPENDIX. 541 

widow of the great ship-bui'der, John Elder, employs a trained teacher 
of cookery to instruct both by demonstrations, and also by visiting 
houses to which he (or she?) is invited. The results are said to be 
excellent. May this good lady find many imitators I 

Memorizing Poetry. — A. About learning poetry by heart, did 
you ever hear of the old Winchester plan of " Standing up"? In the 
regular "exams." ("trials " as we called them at Harrow), each boy 
had to state in how much Homer and Virgil he was ready to " stand 
up." The master examined into the boy's power of saying this by 
heart, and of construing all he said. From the very first the boy 
always gave in the same poetry, only adding to it each time. E. I 
have heard of it. Why, I wonder, was this plan given up? A. I 
have asked old Wykamists, but nobody seems to know. Perhaps the 
quantities learnt became absurdly large. But this method of accretion, 
if not overdone, would leave something behind it for life. Let me 
show you a passage from y^schines (Agnst Ktesip. § 135) which I have 
seen, not in ^schines, but in J. H. Krause's " Education among the 
Greeks" (Gesch. d. Erziehg bei d. Griechen). It is so simple that 
even you may construe it. Am tovto yap otfiai rj/jas TratSay bvras raj 
rcov noLT]TO}V yuafias (Kp-nvBaveiv ip ' ai'8pes bvTes avTois xpuifiiQa. 
E. There is very little left of my Littlego Greek, but I will try : " For 
it is, I suppose, with this object that, when we are boys, we thoroughly 
commit to memory the sayings of the poets— in order to turn them to 
account when we are men." I wish the old Greek custom were con- 
tinued. I believe in learning by heart what is worthy of it (see supra, 
p. 74, «.). A. But the poetry that appeals to children they grow out 
of E. This cannot be said of the best of it ; but of this best there 
is. to be sure, a very small quantity. By "appeals to," I suppose you 
mean "written on purpose for." But in a sense much melodious 
poetry appeals to children even when they can get only a vague notion 
that it has a meaning. I have known children delight in "The 
splendi'ur falls on castle walls," and Hohen Linden pleases them much 
better than anything of Jane Taylor's. But here, at all eVents, there 
can be no doubt about the wisdom of Tranio's rule : " Study what you 
most aftbct." As I have said in an old paper of mine {How to Train 
the Memory ; Kellogg's Teacher's Manuals, No. 9), the teacher may 
read aloud some selected pieces, and let the children separately " give 
maiks" for each. He can then choose " what they most affect." 

Books for Teachers, — A. Don't you think you might give some 
useful advice to young teachers about the books they should read? K 



542 APPENDIX. 

I had intended giving some advice, but in reading tastes differ widely, 
and after all the best advice is Tranio's, " Study what you most affect." 
There are three Englishmen who have written so well that, as it seems, 
they will be read by English-speaking teachers of all time. These are 
Ascham, Locke, and Herbert Spencer. If a teacher does not know 
these he is not likely to know or care anything about the literature of 
education. These authors have attained to the position of classics by 
writing short books in excellent English. After these, I must know 
something of the student before I ventured on a recommendation. If 
he (oi more probably ske) be a student indeed, nothing will be found 
more valuable than Henry Barnard's vols, especially those of the 
English Pedagogy. But the majority of mankind want books that are 
readable, i.e., can be read easily. I do not know any books on 
teaching that I have found easier reading than D'Arcy Thompson's 
Day-Dreams of a Schoolviaster and H. Clay Trumbull's Teaching and 
Teachers (Eng. edition is Hodder and Stoughton's). But some very 
valuable books are by no means easy reading. Take e.g. Froebel's 
Education of Man (trans, by Hailmann, Appletons). This book is a 
fount of ideas, but Froebel seems to want interpreters, and happily he 
has found them. The Baroness Marenholtz-Biilow has done good work 
for him in German, and in English he has had good interpreters as 
e.g.. Miss Shirreff, Mr. H. C. Bowen, and Supt. Hailmann. In the 
case of Froebel there is certainly a want of literary talent ; but even 
where this talent is clearly shown, a book may be by no means "easy 
reading." It may make great demands on our thinking power, and 
thought is never easy. This will probably prevent Thring's Theory 
arid Practice of Tecuhing (Pitt Press, 4^. dd.) from ever being a 
popular book, though eveiy teacher who has read it will feel that he is 
the better for it. Sometimes the size of a book stands in the way of its 
popularity. This seems to me the case with Joseph Payne's Science 
and Art of Teaching (Longmans, icxr.) ; but this book is popular in 
the United States, and I take this as a proof that the American teachers 
are more in earnest than we are. All the essentials of popularity sje 
combined in YxK.cki?, Lectures on Teaching (Fitt Press, ^s.), and this is 
now (and long may it continue !) one of our most read educational works, 
A. But what about less known books ? Cannot you recomm -nd 
anything as yet unknown to fame ? E. Ah ! you want me to tell you 
wbat books deserve fame, that is, to — 

" Look into the seeds of time 
'• \nd say which grain will grow, and which will not." 



APPENDIX. 543 

But I have no intention of posing as the representative of the readers of 
our day, still less of the future. Indeed, far from being able to tell you 
what other people would like or should like, I can hardly say what I 
like myself. Perhaps I come across a book and read it with delight. 
Remembering the very favourable impression made by the first reading 
I go back to the book some years afterwards and I then in some cases 
cannot discover what it was that pleased me. A. That reminds me of 
Wordsworth's similar experience — 

" I sometimes could be sad 
To think of, to read over, many a page. 
Poems withal of name, which at that time 
Did never fail to entrance me, and are now 
Dead in my eyes, dead as a theatre 
Fresh emptied of spectators." (Prelude T.) 
I suppose this has happened to all of us. We go back and the things 
are the same and yet look so different. It is like after the night of an 
illumination looking at the designs by daylight. E. Not many of our 
designs will bear " the light of common day." And if we tried to settle 
which, we should probably be quite wrong. Of my three English 
Educational Classics one can hardly understand why the peoples who 
speak English have retained Ascham while Mulcaster, Brinsley, and 
Hoole are forgotten. Locke had his reputation as a philosopher to 
keep his Thoughts from neglect, and yet at the beginning of 1880 I found 
that there was no E7iglish edition in print. Perhaps some of the old 
writers will come into the field of view again. E.g., my friend Dr. 
Biilbring, of Heidelberg, the editor of De Foe's Compkat Gentleman, 
talks of reviving the fame of Mary Astell, who at the end of the 
seventeenth century took up the rights of women and put very 
vigorously some of the pet ideas of the nineteenth century. A. I will 
not ask you to " look into the seeds of time," and I will not take you 
for a representative person in any way. On these conditions perhaps 
you will give me the names of some of the books that have made such 
a favourable impression on first reading — at least in cases where that 
impression has not been effaced by further acquaintance. E. Agreed. 
1 ought to begin with psychology, but I must wdth sorrow confess that 
I never read a whole book on the science of mind ; so this most 
important section of the subject must be omitted. French and German 
books I will also omit unless they exist in an English translation. 
About the historical and biographical part of the subject I have already 
named many books such as S. S. Laurie's Comentus and Russell's 
Guitnps's Pestalozzi. F. V. N. Painter's History of Education is 



544 APPENDIX. 

pleasantly written ; but no really satisfactory history of education Gin be 
held in one small volume. This objection in limine also applies to G. 
Compayre's History of Pedagogy (trans, by W. H. Payne) which is far 
too full of matter. In it we find many things, but only a very advanced 
student can find muck. Little has been written about English-speaking 
educators, but there are good accounts of Bell, Lancaster, Wilderspin, 
and Stow in J. Leitch's Practical Educationists (Macmillans, 65.). 
Turning to books about principles and methods I have found nothing 
that with reference to the first stage of instruction seems to me better 
than Colonel F. W. Parker's Talks on Teaching (Ne'w York, Kelloggs). 
Fitch's more complete book I have named already. A. Geikie's 
Teaching of Geography (Macmillans, 2s. 6d.) is a book I read with 
great delight. For principles Joseph Payne seems to me one of our 
best educational writers, and we shall before long have, I hope, the 
much expected volume of his papers on the history of education. Some 
of the smaller books that I remember reading with especial gratification 
are Jacob Abbott's Teacher, Calderwood On Teaching, A. Sidgwick's 
lectures on Stimulus (Pitt Press) and on Discipline (Rivingtons), and 
Mrs. Malleson's Notes on Early Training (Sonnenschein). There 
seemed to me a very fine tone in a book much read in the United 
States — D. P. Page's Theory and Practice of Teaching. T. Tate's 
Philosophy of Education I liked very much, and the book has been 
revived by Colonel Parker (Kelloggs). There are some books that are 
worth getting "by opportunity," as the Germans say, good books now 
out of print. Among them I should name Rollin's Method in three 
volumes, Rousseau's Emilius in four, De Morgan's Arithmetic, Essays 
on a Liberal Education edited by Farrar. I know or have known all 
the books here named, but my knowledge and time for reading do not 
extend as far as my bookshelves, and I see before me some books that 
I have not mentioned and yet feel sure I ought to mention. Among 
them are Compayre's Lectures on Pedagogy, translated by W. H. Payne, 
vhich seems an admirable compilation (Boston, Heath ; London, 
Jonnenschein) ; Shaw and Donnell's School Devices (Kelloggs) in 
which I have seen some good "wrinkles"; and T. J. Morgan's 
Educational Mosaics (Boston; Silver, Rogers & Co.). J. Landon's 
School Management (London, K. Paul) I have heard spoken of as an 
excellent book, and I like what I have seen of it. But I set out with a 
promise to mention not all our good books, but those which I thought 
good after reading them. There still remain some that fall under this 
category and have not been mentioned, e.g., The Action of Examinations, 



APPENDIX. 545 . 

by H. Latham, Cotterill's Reforms in Public Si. Jiools, W. H. Payne's 
Contributions, and a pamphlet from which I formed a very high 
estimate of the writer's ability to give us some first-rate books about 
teaching I mean A Pot of Green Feathers, by T. G. Rooper. 

Professional Knowledge. — A. What a pity it is that in English 
we have no name for Kernspriiche ! When an important truth has been 
aptly expressed, the very expression may be an important event in the 
liistory of thought. Take e.g. Milton's words which I observe you 
have quoted more than once, about "the understanding founding itself 
on sensible things" (p. 510). Here we have a "kernel-saying" that 
might have sprung up and yielded a rich crop of improvements in 
teaching if it had only taken root in teachers' minds. Why don't you 
make a collection of such " kernel-sayings " ? E. I have had thoughts 
of doing so, and I have a collection of collections of liernspriiche in 
German. A. Well, German is not the language I should choose for 
the expression of thought. According to Heine, in everything the 
Germans do there is a thought embodied ; and we may add that in 
everything they say a thought is embedded ; but I rather shrink from 
the labour of digging it out. E. You would find a collection of 
" kernel-sayings " in any language rather stiff reading. And after all, 
the sayings which strike us are just those which give utterance to our 
own thought. This is probably the reason why in reading such a book 
so few sayings seem to us worthy of selection. I had intended prefacing 
these essays with some mottoes, as Dr. W. B. Hodgson used to do 
when he wrote, but finally I have left my readers to collect for them- 
selves. A. I should like to know the sort of thing you intended for 
your " first course." E. Here is one of them from Professor Stanley 
Hall, of Worcester, Mass. : "Modern life in all its departments is 
ruled by experts and by those who have attained the mastery that 
comes by concentration." (New England y, of Ed., 27th Februar}', 
1890.) A, According to you, sayings strike us only when they express 
our own thought. In that case Professor Hall's saying would not make 
much impression on the generality of your scholastic friends. Many of 
the best paid schoolmasters in England would burst out laughing if 
anyone spoke of them as " educational experts," Educational experts? 
Why they have never even thought of the art of teaching, leave alone 
the science of education. They are "good scholars" who at one time 
thought enough of preparing for the Tripos or the Honour Schools ; 
and having got a good degree they thought (and small blame to them !) 
how to employ their knowledge of classics so as to secure a comfortable 

KK 



546 APPENDIX. 

income for life. Accordingly they took a mastership, and soon settled 
down into the groove of work. But as for the science of education they 
have thought of it about as much as they have thought of the sea-serpent, 
and would probably lell you with Mr. Lowe (now forgotten as Lord 
Sherbrooke) that '* there is no such thing." E. No doubt they feel the 
force of Dr. Harris's words : " For the most part the teacher who ii 
theoretically inclined is lame in the region of details of work." It 
would be a pity indeed if their " resolution " to make a good income 
were "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." A. They had to 
think how to prepare for the Tripos ; and before long they will have to 
think how to do their work of teachiiig and educating better than they 
have done it hitherto. The future will demand something more than 
" a good degree." Professor Hall is right. The day of the experts is 
coming. But does not even Dr. Harris warn teachers against being 
" too theoretical "? E. It is rather jumping at conclusions to assume 
with some of our countrymen that if a man does not think, he 
does act. Goethe's aphorism which Dr. Harris quotes is this : 
"Thought expands, but lames ; action narrows, but intensifies." Now 
a good many men who do not expend energy in thought are 
by no means strong in action. In education they have no desire 
either to think the best that is thought or to do the best that is done. 
They won't inquire about either ; and they show the most impartial 
ignorance of both. Like Dr. Ridding they are of opinion that 
professional knowledge is to be sought only by persons without the 
advantages of having been at a public school and of "a good degree." 
As for reading books about teaching they leave that sort of thing to 
national schoolmasters. And yet if teaching is an art, they might get 
at least as much good from books as the golf-player gets or the whist- 
player. " How marvellous it is when one comes to consider the 
matter, that a man should decline to receive instruction on a technical 
subject from those who have eminently distinguished themselves in it 
and have systematised for the benefit of others the results of the 
experience of a lifetime ! " Mr. James Payn who wrote this [Some 
Private Views, p. 176) was thinking of books not on teaching but on 
whist ; but his words would come home to teachers if they took as 
much interest in teaching as he takes in whist. A. I fancy you have 
spotted the real deficiency ; it is want of interest. It is only wlien a 
man becomes thoroughly interested in whist that he desires to play 
better, and when he becomes thoroughly interested in teaching that he 
desires to teach better. And if only he desires to improve he wil/ 



APPENDIX. 547 

seek all the professional knowledge within his reach. " Every one," 
!;ays Matthew Arnold, "every one is aware how those who want to 
cultivate any sense or endowment in themselves must be habitually 
conveissnt with the works of people who have been eminent for that 
sense, must study them, catch inspiration from them. Only in this 
way can progress be made." (Quoted by Momerie). Let us hope that 
you have incited some young teachers to study and catch inspiration 
trom the great thinkers and workers in the educational field. E. This 
is the object I have aimed at. If I wanted a motto I think I should 
choose this from Froebel interpreted by Miss Shirreff : 

" The duty of each generation is to gather up its inheritance from 
the past, and thus to serve the present, and prepare better tilings foi ths 
future." 



SYLLABUS 
OF QUICK'S EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS. 

From the International Reading Circle Course of 
Professional Study. 



Pages I to di. 

I. THE RENASCENCE. 

1. The essential element in literature. 

2. Classical literature in education. 

3. The educational classes produced by renascence tend' 

encies. 

4. How much of the error of the " renascence ideal " still 

survives .'' 

5. Is this harm overbalanced by the good influences of that 

ideal ? 

II. STURM. 
(See Painter, pp. 160-162, /or Sturtn''s Course 0/ Study.) 

1. What two or more influences of Sturm's school would 

you mention as most prominently retained in our 
larger schools of to-day ? 

2. How far are these influences good, and in what ways are 

they evil } 

III. THE JESUITS. 

1. Their motive. 

2. Their elements of excellence. 

3. What value attaches to their provisions for securing 

thoroughness } 

4. What to their instruction in morals } 

5. What to their physical training } 

Pages 63 to 171. 

RABELAIS. 

I. His products of education : wisdom, eloquence, and 
piety. 



550 SYLLABUS OF 

2. His emphasis upon the study of ihings. 

3. His standard of physical training. 

MONTAIGNE. 

1. His prime product of education : wisdom, in thought 

and action ; not knowledge. 

2. The practical errors in his theory of educational meth- 

ods. 

ASCHAM. 

I. His method of Latin instruction. 

MULCASTER. 

1. His principles of education as identical with the best of 

to-day. 

2. His recognition of the need for trained teachers. 



1. His practical failure due to the characteristics of the 

man, not to faults in his principles of education. 

2. Nine cardinal principles of didactics as gathered from 

his writings upon method. 



1. The first to treat education in a scientific spirit. 

2. Based educational method upon an understanding of the 

nature of the child. 

3. Insisted upon the direct study of external Nature, and 

upon the learning of words only in connection with 
things. 

4. Recognized education as the development of all the 

faculties of body and of mind. 

5. Demanded the equal instruction of both sexes. 

6. Taught that languages must be learned through prac- 

tice, not by means of rules. 

7. Made provision for education through the hand as well 

as through the eye and ear. 



QUICK'S EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS. 55 I 

* Pages 1 72 to 2 1 8. 

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 

1. Purpose and method of Saint Cyran's "Little Schools." 

2. Actual results of English public-school influences as op- 

posed to St. Cyran's theory. 

3. Port- Royalists' restoration of the mother tongue as the 

subject-matter of elementary instruction. 

4. Literature study as distinguished from grammar study 

of Latin and Greek. 

5. Logic, or the act of thinking. 

6. The principles set forth in the pedagogic writings of the 

Port-Royalists. 

SOME ENGLISH WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. 

1. Francis Bacon : first great leader of the realists — of 

those who sought to know the facts of Nature rather 
than the thoughts of man. 

2. Charles Hoole : " one of the pioneer educators of his 

century." 

3. Dury and Petty : extending the doctrines of realism. 

4. Milton : elevating the moral nature to the first place in 

his theory of a complete education. 

Pages 219 to 238. 

JOHN LOCKE. 
(See Painter's History, .pp. 218-223.) 

1. From the standpoints of reason he rejected the estab- 

lished methods. 

2. His definition of knowledge. 

3. Development of body and mind, and formation of right 

habits the true aim of education. 

4. Locke's comparison of the child to white paper or wax. 

5. The naturalistic school of educational thinkers. 

6. Objections to classing Locke as a utilitarian. 



552 SYLLABUS OF 

Pages 239 to 289. ' 

ROUSSEAU. 

T. To be classed with the thinkers, not with the doers, in 
educational work. 

2. The value of his destructive work. 

3. His three kinds of education — from Nature, from men, 

from things. 

4. The first essential in the work of education is to under- 

stand the mind of childhood. 

5. Some characteristics of the mode of acting of the child's 

mind. 

6. Evil of over-directing in both discipline and instruc- 

tion. 

7. Right and wrong views of the value of self-teaching. 

BASEDOW. 

1. His mode of thought and manner of life. 

2. The theory outlined in his Elementary and in his Book 

of Method. 

3. Interesting devices used at the Philanthropinum. 

4. The training of the senses and acquirement of knowl- 

edge through the senses pre-eminent both in Rous- 
seau's and in Basedow's theories. 

Pages 290 to 383. 

PESTALOZZI. I. HIS LIFE. 

1. His personal characteristics as shown in his early life 

and in his farming venture. 

2. His view of the nature and purpose of education. 

3. The first experiment at Neuhof and its failure. 

4. The orphanage at Stanz. 

5. The experiences at Burgdorf. 

6. The Institute at Yverdun. 

7. The last success at Clindy. 

8. Death of Pestalozzi at Neuhof. 



QUICK'S EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS. 553 

II. PESTALOZZl's PRINCIPLES. 

1. The main object of the school not to teach but to 

develop. 

2. The child first to be trained to love ; moral education. 

3. The child next to be trained to think ; intellectual edu- 

cation. 

4. The child also to be trained to work j physical educa- 

tion. 

5. The self -activity of the pupil the real force in all true 

education. 

Pages 384 to 413. 

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. 

1. The best tendencies of educational thought embodied 

in Froebel's teachings. 

2. Froebel imperfectly understood even by the most earnest 

students. 

3. Influence, of his own neglected youth upon his after 

consideration for children. 

4. His communion with Nature in the Thuringian Forest. 

5. His transfer from the study of architecture to the practice 

and study of education. 

6. His association with Pestalozzi at Yverdun. 

7. The influence of his military experience in showing him 

the value of discipline and united action. 

8. His experiences in teaching prior to his first kinder- 

garten. 

9. The edict forbidding the establishment of schools based 

upon Froebel's principles. 

10. His death at threescore years and ten. 

froebel's EDUCATIONAL PRINCIPLES. 

11. To find in science the expression of the mind of God, 

12. To view education as founded upon religion, and lead- 

ing to unity with God. 

13. To regard the educational process as a process of de- 

velopment. 



554 SYLLABUS OF 

14. To seek development, or evolution of power, in the exer- 

cise of those functions, in the use of those faculties, 
that it is desired to develop. 

15. That the exercise productive of true development must 

be in harmony with the function or faculty to be de- 
veloped, and proportioned to its present strength. 

16. That to be most truly efficient the exercise must arise 

from and be sustained by the j'<:'//'-activity of the func- 
tion or faculty to be developed. 

17. That this self-activity must manifest itself not in re- 

ceptive action or acquisition alone, but in expressive 
action or production. 

18. Practically, that children should be busied with things 

that they can not only see but can handle and use in 
the making or representing of new things to express 
their growing ideas. 

Pages 414 to 469. 

JACOTOT. 

1. Set pupils to learning by their own investigation and 

refrained from giving them direct instruction. 

2. Asserted that all human beings are equally capable of 

learning. 

3. Declared that every one can teach ; and, moreover, can 

teach that which he does not know. 

4. Has done great service by giving prominence to the 

principle that the mental faculties must be developed 
and trained by being put to actual work. 

5. By his doctrine *' All is in all," he gave prominence to the 

correlation of knowledge. 

6. Made the thorough mastery of a single book and the 

retention of it all in the memory his basis of all fur- 
ther accumulation. 

7. His methodology summarized : Learn something, repeat 

it, reflect upon it, test all related facts by it. 

HERBERT SPENCER. 

I. The value in the views of one who comes to educational 
problems free from tradition and prejudice. 



QUICK'S EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS. 555 

2. The teaching that gives the most valuable knowledge 

also best disciplines in the mental faculties. 

3. The end and aim of education is to prepare us for com- 

plete living. 

4. The test of the relative value of knowledge lies in its 

power to influence action in right or wrong directions. 

5. In method we must proceed from the simple to the com- 

plex ; from the known to the unknown ; from the 
concrete to the abstract. 

6. Every study should have a purely experimental intro- 

duction, and children should be led to make their own 
investigations and draw their own inferences. 

7. Instruction must excite the interest of pupils and there- 

fore be pleasurable to them. 

Pages 470 to 503. 

I. THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. The ideal of public-school work is to beget a healthy 

interest and pleasure in the doing of hard work. 

2. The interest to arise from the nature of the subject 

itself, or from the recognized usefulness of the subject, 
or from emulation. 

3. The value of pictures in the teaching of children as a 

means of awakening active interest. 

4. The first teaching in reading and number to begin with 

the objective method and pass thence to the sub- 
jective. 

5. In geography and history the lively description and the 

interesting story to precede the formal compend. 

II. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE. 

6. Sources and means of the teacher's influence upon his 

pupils. 

7. Causes of the loss of his good influence. 

8. The influence of a few leading spirits among the pupils 

themselves. 

9. A mode of religious training. 



556 SYLLABUS. 

Pages 504 to 547. 

REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. 

1. The good and the ill influences of the Jesuits as the 

" first reformers " in educational practice. 

2. Rabelais, the first to advocate training as distinguished 

from teaching. 

3. Comenius, founder of the science of education, recogniz- 

ing in his scheme the threefold nature of man. 

4. Rousseau, the originator of the " new education " as 

based upon the inherent nature of the child. 

5. Pestalozzi and Froebel, reformers of the processes of 

education, seeking to secure the development of each 
faculty by its own activity in appropriate exercise. 



INDEX, 



Abbott 

A.bbott,E. A.,on Montaigne and Locke, 
231, n. 

— Jacob ; Teacher, 544 
Accomplishments, 451 
Action, the root of Ed., 403 

" Advice to a Young Lord " (1691), 234, n. 
iEschines on memorizing, 541 
^sop's Fables, Locke's, 238, «. 
Alexander De Villa Dei, 80, 532 
All can learn, Jacoto*, 416 

— Education for, 356 

— Education for. Comenius, 515, 522 

— is in all. Jacotot, 423 

— to be educated. Comenius, 146 
Altdorf burnt, 326 

Analogies fop illustration not proof, 155 
Anchoran edits C.'sjanua, 163 
Andreje, J. V., 122 
Anschauung, Pestalozzi on, 360 

— Froebel for, 408 
Apparatus, 462 

Aquaviva and Jesuit schools, 36 

Arber, Prof., 82, «., 83 

Arithmetic, Children's. Comenius 145 

— for children, 479, 482 

Armstrong, Ld., on cry for Useless Know- 
ledge, 78, «. 
Arnauld, his Reglement, 189 

— the Philosopher of Port-Royal, 187 
Arnaulds, The, and the Jesuits, 173 
Arnold, Dr., educator of English type, 

219 

— History Primer, 487 

— on citizens' duties, 447 

Arnold, M., about the Middle Age, 240 

— Barbarian's inaptitude for ideas, 178 

— on importance of reading, 539 

— on studj-ing great authorities, 547 

— on V/ordsand Things, 154 
A.mstiidl, F A. : Kaielais, 69 



Beginners 

Art learnt by right practice, 4iO 

— of observing children, 252 
Ascham against epitomes, 486, f%. 

— and Jacotot, 425 
Ascham's method for Latin, 84 

— "six points," 85 

" Ascott Hope," quoted, 498, )i. 
Athletic public schoolmen, 514, n. 
Audition, Hint for, 429, n. 
Augsburg, Ratke at, 106 
Bacon against epitomes, 446, A. 

— for Jesuits, 33, n. 

— for :^udy of Nature, 408 

— on " young plants," 406 

— studied by Comenius, 122, 149 
Baconian teaching, Effect of, 510 
Bahrd, 289 

Balliet, T. M., quoted, 156, «. 

Banzet, Sara, 408 

Barbauld, Mrs., on women's concealment 

of knowledge, 98, «, 
Barbier, La Discipline., 60, «. 
Bardeen's O'bis Picttis, 168 
Barnard, H., English Pedagogy, 542 

— Eng. Pedagogy, gt, «., 212, «. 

— on Kindergarten, 409 

— Opinion oi Positions, 91, and n. 

— The Kindergarten, 413 
Bartle Massey in Adam Bede, 507 
Basedow and Goethe, 277 

Basedow, Pinloche's mentioned, 289. n.. 

527 
Bateus, 160, n. 
Bath, W., 160, «. 
Beaconsfield, Ld. His " two nations,* 

371 
Beautiful, Pestalozzi on sense of the, 

339 
Beginners shall have best teachers. Mul 
caster, 95 



558 



Bell 



INDEX. 



Colet 



Bell, Dr., at Yverdun, 352 

Bellers, John, for h.ind-work, 211, H. 

Benham, D. His Coinenins-, 119. His 

trans, oi Sch. of Infancy, 142 
Besant, W. Readings in Rabelais, 67, r 
Biographies before history, 489 
Birmingham lecture quoted, 193, H. 
Blackboard, Drawing on, 476 
Blunder of insisting on repulsive tasks, 

467 

— of not getting clear ideas about defini- 
tions, 460 

— of giving only book knowledge, 458 

— of teaching epitomes, 485 

— of teaching words without ideas, 475 
— I of '■ cramming " children, 374, 375 

— of not beginning at the beginning, 
468 

— of assuming knowledge in pupil, 468 

— of neglecting interest, 464, 474 

— of teaching the incomprehensible, 195 

— about " first principles," 461 
Bluntschli warns Pestalozzi, 293 
Bodily health, Jesuits cared for, 48, =07 
Bodmer, 291 • 
Body, its part in education, 566 

— must be educated, 411 

— Rabelais's care of the, 508 
Boileau's Arret, 187, «. 

Bookishness of Renascence. Montaigne, 

76 
Book-learning, connected with life, 459 
Books for teachers, 541 
"Books, Miserable," 153 

— Reaction against, 510 

— Respect for, 481 

— Rousseau against, -259 

— useful in learning an art, 346 
Bowen, E. E., 118, «., 532 

Bow-n, H. C, on connected teaching, 424, 
n. 

— on development, 399 

— on Kindergartens without idea, 410 
Brcal, M., quoted, 286, «. 

— on child-collectors, 429, r. 

— on teachers, 455, n. 
Brewer, Prof., 98 
Brinsley, J., 200 

— on trairfing teachers, 99, n. 

Brown, Dr. John, Ed. through senstt, 458, 
i>. 

— Hera Sub., quoted, 169 



Browning, Oscar, on Humanists, ftc, 

231 
Buchanan and Infant Schools, 409 
Ruisson on Intuition, 361 
Eulbring, Dr., and Mary Aslell, 543 
Burgdorf Institute, 341 

— Pestalozzi at, 335 
Burke, quoted, 437 
Buss, 341, 365 

Butler, Bp., on Ed., 147, 148, n. 

Butler, Samuel, quoted, 30 

Cadet on Port-Royal, 195 

Calkins, Prof., on learning thro sens**, 

150. «• 
Cambridge exam, of teachers, 219, «. 

— man, 40 years ago, 431, n. 
Campanella, 122 

Campe, 287 

Capitalizing discoveries, 517 

Carlyle about the Schoolmen, 10, r. 

— on divine message, 401 

— on History, quoted, 14s, ». 

— on Knowledge, 223 

— on " nag for sandcart," 467 

— on teaching religion, 359, n. 
Carlyle s " mostly fools," 517, «. 

— " Succedaneum for salt," 498 
Carre on Port-Royal, 195 

Cat, Rousseau on the, 258 

Cato's Distichs, 81, 121 

Chambers, H. E., of N.Orleans, on"teams," 

531 
Channing, Eva, Trans, of L, and G., 306, 
n. 

Children and poetry, 541 

— care for things and animals, 475, 531 

— not small men, 250 
Childhood the sleep of Reason, 245 
ChristopJur aud Eliza, 309 

Church, Dean R. W., on Montaigne, 71, 

». 
Citizens' duties, 447 
Classics, " Discovery " of the, 3 

— do not sati!.fy modern wants, y 

— in Public Schools, 76 

— too hard for boys, 16 
Classification, Thoughts on, 23a 
Classifiers, Caution against, 23* 
Class matches, 42, 529 
Clindy, Pest.ilozzi at, 353 
Clougb, quoted, 358 

Colet, Dean, 60, 533 



Columbus 



INDEX. 



Eve 



55Q 



Cclanibus and geography, 2 
Comenius and Science of ed., 513 

— Bcoks about, 170 

— at Amsterdam, 133 

— in London, 126 

— criticized by Lancalot, 186, «. 

— stiftung, 119 

Compayre, ffiji. 0/ Pedagogy and Lec- 
tures, 544 

— on Jesuits. 56 

— on Port-Ru3'aI, 196 
Compendia Dispendia, 169 
Complete living, H. Spencer on, 443 
"Complete Retainers," 89, 426, h. 
Composition, 483 

Compulsion, Nothing on, 112 

Concept, Larger, how formed, 457 

Concertations, 42 

Concrete, Start from, 461 

Conduct 0/ Understanding and Reason, 

331 

Conferences pedagogiques, 362 
Connexion of knowledges, 424 
Consolation, &c. , Brinsley, 200 
Cooking should be taught, 540 
Coote, Edward, English Sdiolemaster, 

91 
Corporal punishment, Pestalozzi for, 327 
Cotterill, C. C, Suggested Reforms, 545 
Cowley's Proposition, &c., 202 
Cowper on man and animals, 517 
Creative instinct, froebel, 404 
Daniel, Canon, quoted, 155, «. 
Daniel, Le P. Ch., quoted, 62, n. 
Day-dreatns of a Schoolmaster, 54s 
Day-schools wanted, 499 
.1 )ead knowledge, 52^ 
] )ecimal scale universal, 479 
De Garmo, Dr., on language work, 481, 

n. 
■- quoted, 403, n. 
De Geer and Comenius, 130 
De Imitatione, quoted, 398 
De Morgan, quoted, 433, ». 
De Quincey, quoted, 153, «. 
Derby, Ld., on criminals, 358 
— quoted, 256, n. 

Development, Froebel's theory of, 400 
Didactic teaching, Rousseau against, 268 
Diderot, quoted, 365, «. 
Diesierweg on dead knowledge, 365 
Diesterweg's rule for repetition, iii 



Dilucidatio of Comenius, isj ^ 

Discentem oportet credere, \^-2 
Dislike often from ignorance, 466 
Doctrinale, So, 532 
Double Translating, 86 

— translation judged, 89 
Drawing, Comenius for, 146 

— Pestalozzi on, 368 

— Rousseau for, 261 
Drill, Need of, 526 
Drudgery defined, 472 
Drummond, Henry, quoted, 502, n. 
Dunciad, quoted, 31, 422 
Dupanloup, Bp., quoted, 113 
Dupanloup against Public Schools, 179 
Durj 's Reformed Schoole, 203 

— watch simile, 205 

Early education negative, 244, 403 
Ecclesiasticus, quoted, 77 
Ecole modele, books not used, 154, n. 
" Economy of Nature," 440 
Ediication of Man, published 1826, 392 
Educational Reformers. History of the 
book, 527 

— in America, 529 
Educations. Rousseau's three, 248 
Edwardes, Rev. D., quoted, 499, «, 
Elbing, Comenius at, 130 
Elementarie. Mulcaster's, 92 
Elementary, Basedow's, published, 275 

— course. Mulcaster, 97 

— studies. Comenius, 141 
Elizabeth, Queen, Ascham's pupil, 88 
Elyot's Gozientour, 91, 202 
Emerson, R. W., quoted, 501 
Empyrical before Rational, 462 
Emulation cultivated by Jesuits, 42 

— Forms of, 530 
Encyclopa;dia Bri., 385, n. 

Endter. ¥\x\X\i\\&x oi Orbis Pictus, 167 
English, Mulcaster's eiilogy of, 534 

— party questions, 381 

— tongue, Mulcaster on, 92 

— without Verbs and Substantives 460, 
n. 

Epitomes. Against, 483 
Erasmus against ignorance, 523, n. 

— for small schools, 180, n. 

— the Scholar, 23 

Erinnentngen eines JesvitemSglings, 60 

Eruditio in Jesuit Schools, 40 

Eve, H. W., on old and young teachers, 506 



56o 



Evening 



INDEX. 



Harris 



^venitig Hour of Hermit, 30a 

Evolution and Froebel, 399 

Examination of children for scholarships, 

97 

— knowledge, 540 
Examinations cause pressure, 77 
Exercises, Correcting, 4S4 

— Hints for, 429, «. 
Experience v. Theory, 107 
Experts needed in modern life, 545 
Eyes, Use of, 411 

Eyre, Father, on the Ratio, 57 
Fables for Composition, 483 

— Pestalozzi's, 312 

Faculties, Equal attention to all, 537 
Fag-end, Children not the, 354 
Faust, quoted, 426, 428 
Fellenberg, 344 
Ficlite and Pestalozzi, 347 
Final opinions. Demand for, 410 
Fire like knowledge, 433 
First-hand knowledge not enough, 224 
First impressions important, 194 
Fischer, O., 366, «. 
Fitch's Lectures on Teaching, 542 
Folk-schools, Importance of, 376 
Forcing, Coraenius against, 144 
Formative instinct. Froebel, 404 
Franklin, B., on reading aloud, 482 
Froebel and Bacon, 408 

— on preparing better things for future, 
547 

— showed the right road, 384 

Frouda, J. A., on use of hagiology, 503, n. 
'' Furtherers" and " Hinderers," 531 
Garbovicianu on Basedow, 289, ft. 
Gargantuas Education, 63 
Garrick, David, " When doctrine, &c.," 

536 
Geikie, A. : Teaching of Geography, 544 
Generalization, 461 

General view should not come first, 169 
Geography absent from Trivium and Quad 

rivium, 2 
~ Beginnings in, 489 

— ho IV begun, Comenius, 145 
Gerard, Father (S. J.), quoted, 57 
German not a good medium of thought, 

545 
" Gertrude," Account of, 301 
Gesner, J. M., for Statarisch and Cnrso- 

risch, 32 



" Gifts." Froebel's, 408 
Girard, PAre, and Pestalozzi, 349 
Girardin, St. M., on Rousseau, 264, n. 
Girls, Schoolmistresses' blunders nbont, 

443 
Giving "G.'s," 530 
Goethe and bad pictures, 487 

— on Basedow, 276 

— on unity of man, 518, n. 

— on Voices and Echoes, 504 

— on thought and action, 546 
Golden Age, in Past or Future? 22 
Goldsmith against epitomes, 406, n. 

" Good scholars" as schoolmasters, 545 

— spirits needed for teaching, 497 
Grammar, 481, «. 

— learnt from good authors, Aschiun, 
85 

— Mistakes about, 460 
Grant's, H., Arithtiietic, 482 

"Gratis receive, gratis give." Jesuit rul«, 

39 
Greaves, J. P., at Yverdun, 352, «. 
Grounding, Importance of, Mulcaster, 96^ 

«. 
Groundwork by best workman, Mulc«stci, 

95 
Grube's method, 479 
Guesses at Truth, quoted, 24 
Guillaume's Pestalozzi mentioned, 383, ry, 
Guimps, 383, n. 
Guimps's Pestalozzi, 317, &c. 
Habrecht, Isaac, 161, «. 
Hack, Miss, Tales of Travelers, 490 
Kallmann, W. H., on creative doing, /)U 
Hale, Sir Matthew, for realism, 212, «. 
Hall, Stanley, about L. S^ G., 306, «. 

— Experts needed, 545 
Hallam on Comenius, 158 
Halle, Children s Lessons at, 475 
Hancock, Supt, J., quoted, 46, tt, 
Handelschulen, 445 

Hands, Children's use of, 407 

— use of, 411 

— use of, 538 
Handwork at Neuhof, 997 

— Comenius for, 146 

— Petty on, 211 

— Rabelais for, 66 

— Rousseau for, 271 
Harmar, J.. 161, «. 

Harris, W T., on " Nature,'' loe 



Harris 



INDEX. 



Knowledge 



561 



Harris, W. T., started public Kindergar- 
tens, 410 

— on thought and action, 546 
Harrow " Bluebook," 532 

— Class-matches at, 529 

— Religious instruction at, 500 
Hartlib, S., 124, «., 130 
Hazlitt, W. C, 91, n. 

Helplessness produced by bad teaching,464 
Helps, Sir A., for science, 447, «. 

— on looking straiglit at things, 481 

— on open-mindedness, 502 

— quoted, 434, n. 
Herbart at Burgdorf, 367, 1*. 

— on Rousseau, 269 

Herbert, Ld., of Cherbury, on physical 

ed., 227 
Hewitson on Stonyhurst, 59 
" Hinter dam Berge," 449 
Hints from pupils, 367, n. 
History, Beginnings in, 489 

— H. Spencer on, 448 
Home and School, 342 
Honesty the best policy, 529 
Hoole's A nev) discovery, &c., 200 

— trans, of Orbis Pictus, 166 
Humility to be taught, 503 
Hymns to be used, 501 
Ickelsamer, 116 

Ideal, high, 496 

— value of, 382 

— want of an, 471 
Ideas before symbols, 253 
" Idols," escape from, 514 
Ignorance, Erasmus agst. , 523 
U/aiit afj>rendre, &c., Jacotot, 424 
" Impressionists," 89, 426, n. 
Improvements suggested by Mulcaster, 92 
Inclinations should be studied, 465 
Industrial school at Neuhof, 297 

" Infelix divortium verum et verborum," 139 

Innovators, 103 

" Inquiry into course of Nature," 311 

Instintct is instruere, 432 

III?' ruction an exercise of faculty, 332 

Intellect before critical faculty. Comenius, 

138 
Interest, Degrees in, 113 

— in teaching needed, 546 

— needed for activity, 474 

— needed for mental exertion, 193, n. 

— No success without, 473 



Interesting, Can learning be 1 465 
\n\.\i\\.\on=-Anschauung, 361 

— Froebel for, 408 
Investigation, Method of, 437 
"Ipse dixit," Comenius against, 152 
Iselin, editor of Ephemerides, 298, 30a 
" Jacob's Ladder," Pestaloz^i, 356 
Jahn on Froebel, 386 

Jansenius and St.-Cyran, 175 
Janua, English versions of C.'s, 165 

— Jesuits, i5o, n. 

— of Comenius published, 123, 163 
Jebb on Erasmus, 523, n. 

Jesuit a trained teacher, 37 

— course included Studia Superiora ci 
itiferiora, 38 

— exams., 47 

— shows effect of planned system, 532 

— teaching. An example of, 44 
Jesuits. Books about, 34 

— the army of the Church, 55 

— the first reformers, 506 

Johnson, Richard, Gram, Contmeniaries, 

82 
Johnson, Dr., on knowledge of education, 

410. 525 

— on Scholemcister, 82 

Jonson, Ben. " Soul for salt," 498, «. 

Jullien on Intuition, 362 

Jung, 106 

Kant and Intuition, 361 

— on the Philanthropinum, 288 
Kay-Shuttleworth and Pestalozzi, 352 
Kempe, W., Ed. 0/ Children, 83 

" Kernspriiche," 545 
Kindergarten and Comenius, 143 

— a German word, 409, «. 

— Froebel on aim of, 409 

— Notion of, 406 

— The first, 394 
Kinglake's Eoihen, quoted, 15 
Kingsley on Jesuits, 54 

Knowing, after Being and Doing, J07 

— by heart, 74, n. 
Knowledge and Locke, 513 

— a tool, 540 

— and Comenius, 512 

— Danger from, 78 

— Desire for, 540 

— despised by New Educationists, 53^ 

— Genesis of, 462 

— Locke's definition of, 222 



^62 



Knowled2'e 



INDEX. 



Masters 



Knowledge must not be dead knowledge, 

524 

— not fastened to mind, Montaigne, 71 

— over-estimated by Comenius, i66 

— Perfect, impossible, 226 

— spreads like fire, 433 

— self-gained, Locke, 515 

— Teai.hing what it is, 433 
Knowledges, Relative value of, /)^9 

— Connexion of, Comenius, 157 
Known to Unknown, 457 
Koethen, Ratke fails at, 107 
Kruesi joins Pestalozzi, 340 
Lancelot on Coaienius, 186 

— on learning Latin, 185 

Landon, J;, School Management, 544 
Langethal and Froebel, 390 
Language-learning, Lancelot on, 186, n. 

— Method for, 426, «. 

Language lives in small vocabulaiy, 169 

— not Literature, 17 

— teaching, Ratke's plan, it6 
Languages, Comenius on learning, 140 
Latham, H., Action 0/ Exatn., 544 
Latin, Comenius for, 159 

Laurie, S. S., his Comenius, 119 

— on books of Comenius, 135 

— on Milton, 214 
Lavater and Basedow, 276 

— and Pestalozzi, 291 

Leam, Every one can, Jacotot, 416 
Learning as employment, 75 

— begins with birth. Pestalozzi, 537 

— by heart wrong. Ratke, 113 

— by heart. See Memorizing 

— for the few, Mulcaster, 93 

— may be borrowed, Montaigne, 73 

— must not be play, 367 

— not Knowledge, Montaigne, 71 
Leipzig, Dr. Vater at, 477 
Leisure hours, 450 

— often useless, 498 

Leitch, J., Practical Educationists, 409 

— Practical Educationists, 544 
Lemaitre, 186, «. 

Leonard and Gertrude, 305 
Lessing on Raphael, 420 
Leszna sacked, 132 
" Letters," Comm. for, 538 
Lewis, Prince, and Ratke, io5 
Li.^ht from within, Nicole, 190 
Likes and Dislikes, Study, 466 



Lily's Carmen Man., 8x 

— Grammar, 533 
Literature and Science, 15^ j^ 

— at Port-Royal, 184 

— in education, ^39 

— or Letters, 9 

— What is? 6 

" Little Schools," 176 

Locke against sugar a»fd salt, 466 

— and Froebel, 407 

— behind Comeniun, 230 

— Books on, 238 

— for Working .Schools, 211, r, 

— on Public Schr^ols, 177, 513 

— and Rousseau, 227 

— against ordihary learning, 234 

— predecessor of Pestalozzi, 362 

— two characteristics, 220 

— teacher disposes influence, 513 

— Was he a utilitarian ? 234 
Locksley f/ai! quoted, 152 

Louis XIV and Port-Royalists, 176 

Love the essential principle, 358 

Loyola on body and soul, 6a 

Lowe or Pestalozzi ? 379 

Lubinus, E., 166, n. 

Ludus Literarius, 200 

Lupton, J. H., and Colet, 534 

Lupton, J. H., on CatechismusV., 102, u 

Lux in tcnebris, 133 

Lytton, Ld., on mother's interference, 371 

MacAlister, James, and Atischauung, 

361 
Macaulay on French Revolution, 246 

— wanted, 488 

" Magis magnos clericos, &c.," 70 
Maine, Sir H. S., on studying teaching 

scientifically, 410, n, 
Malleson, Mrs., Notes on Early Truinin^'f 

544 
Mangnall's Questions, 374 
Manning, Miss E. A., a Froebelian 
Manual labour at Stanz, 331 
Marcel, C, 535 

Marenhollz-Bulow and Froebel, 394 
Marion's fraud, 173 
Martineau, Miss, and comet, 223 
Masham, Lady, on Locke, 220, n. 
Masson, D., quotes Mulcaster, 534 
M.nsson, D., quotes Didac. Mag., 140, t\ 
Masson's Milton, quoted, 127, >«. 
Masters and religion, 49a 



Masters 



INDEX. 



New 



56: 



Masters, The " open" and the " reserved," 

494 
Mastery, 365 

Maurice and Froebel, 406 
Maurice, F. D., on Jesuits, 54 
Max I^Iiiller, a descendant of Basedow's, 

289, «. 
Mayo, Dr., 352, n. 

Mayor, J. E. B., on Scholonaster, 82, 83 
Mazzini on humanity, 518, n. 
Measuring for arithmetic, 480 
MediEeval art excelled Renascence, 5 
'■^Melius est scire pauca, &c.," 168 
Memorizing, 113 

— poetry, 541 

— Sacchini on, 50, ». 

Memory after senses, Comenius, 138 

— alone can be driven, 474 

— and interest, 4S7 

— depending on associating sounds, 193, 
n. 

— helped by association, 424 

— Jacotot's demands on, 425 

— stuffed, Montaigne, 73 

— subservient to other powers, /,ii 

— The carrj'ing, 77 

— Waste of, 431 

— without books, 257 
Methodology, Truths of, 536 
Methods defined, 414 

" Methods teach the Teachers," 82 
Metliodus Linguaruin, published, 131 
Miciiaelis and Moore, Trans, of Froebel, 

413 
Michelet on Montaigne, 94 

— on Montaigne, 229, n, 

— on Stanz, 317 
Middendorff and Froebel, 390 

Middle Age blind to beauty in human form 

and literature, 5 
Middle-class education without ideal, 470 
Middle Schools Comm., quoted, 538 
Mill, J. S., against specializing, 453, n, 
—■for teaching classics, 444 

— on history, 449, ». 
Milton a great scholar, 212 

— a Verbal Realist, 215 
and Realism, 23 

— on learning through the senses, 150, 213, 

510 
Milwaukee, Inter-class matches at, 531 
ftdind like sea-anemone, 474 



Model book, Ascham for, 87 

— Jacotot's use of, 436 

— Ways of studying, 426 
Molyneux on geography, 225 
Moncrieff, H., quoted, 490, n. 
Monitorial principle, 538 
Monitors at Stanz, 333 
Monotony wearing to the young, 531 
Montaigne and Froebel, 407 
Montaigne-for educating mind and body, 

509 

— his paradox of ham, 419, n. 
Moral development first, 358 

Morality is development of infant's grati- 
tude, 309 

Morals, Rousseau on, 263 

Morf, Summary of Pestalozzi's principles, 
368 

Morgan, T. J., Educational Mosaics, 54^ 

Mother-tongue, 104 

— Everj'thing through, in 

— first at Port-Royal, 184 • 

— Jacotot's plan for, 435 

— only, till ten, Comenius, 139 

— Ratke for, 108 
Mulcaster for English, 534 
Mulcaster's elementary subject, 97 

— Life, I02 

— proposed reforms, 92 

— style fatal, 92 
Music, Benefit from, 45a 

— Rousseau for, 261 
Naef, Eliz., at Neuhof, 300 
Nageli, 368 

Napoleon I and PestalozzI, 343 
Narrow-mindedness, How to avoid, 503 
Natural History at Stanz, 332 
Natural v. Usual, 516 
Nature, Comenius about, 136, 137 

— Laws of, 134 

— Ratke for, loo 

— Return to, 515 

Negative education, Rousseau, 519 
New Code of 1890, 379, «. 
" New Education " started by Rousr.eat\ 
271, 522 

— education and old, 524 

— Froebel's in 1816, 391, 41J 
Newman, J. H., on Locke, 23s 

— on connexion of knowledges, 158 

— on nature of literature, 7, n. 
New master, Advice to, 60, «. 



564 



New 



INDEX. 



Posture 



New road, Pe^talozzi's, 337 

— York School Journal and New Educa- 
tion, 411 

Nicole on Ed., igo 

Niebuhr's H eroengeschichten, 428, ft, 

Niemeyer on thoroughness, 366, n 

Nihil est in intellfctu, &c., 138 

N jah's Ark for words, i6i 

Noncon/orinist, 504 

Normal Schools on increase, 414 

Nouvelle Heloise, Family life, 24a 

Number of boarders in Port - Royalist 

schools small, 179 
Numbers, First knowledge of, 479 
Numeration before notation, 479 
Oberlin, 408 

Observation, Poetry for cultivating, 209 
Observing children, 251 
" Omnia sponte fluant," Comenius, 136 
One thing at a time, Ratke, 109 
Opinion, Education of, 502 

— Sensible men cannot differ in, Locke, 
221, n. 

Orbis Pictus published, 132, 167 
"Over and over again," Ratke, no 
Over-directing, Rousseau against, 265 
Overworking teachers, 497 
Oxenstiern sees Comenius, 128 
Painter, F. V. N., History of Ediua- 

tiott, 543 
Parallel Grammar Series, 114, t, 
Paraenesis by Sacchini, 34, «. 
Parker, F. W., and Kindergarten, 411 

— on reading, 482 

— Talks on Teaching, 544 

Parker, C. S., in Essays on Lib. Ed., 3a 

Parkm, John, 366, «. 

Parkman, Francis, on Jesuits, 55, 56 

Pascal and Loyola, 172 

Past, No escape from the, a 

Pattison, Mark, on exams., 228, -». 

— on dearth of books, 12 

— on what is education, 228 

— on Milton 

Pattison's account of Renascence, 4 
Paul III recognizes Jesuits, 35 
Paulsen on Jesuits, 55 

— on Comenius, 153 

Payn, James, on learning from books, 546 
Payne, Joseph, on Pestalozzi, 359, n. 

— on observation, 361 

^- on child's unrest, 407, ». 



Payne, Joseph, Science and Art of TeMhr 
ing, 542 

— Papers on Historj- of Ed., 544 

— summing up Pestalozzi, 369, n. 

— a disciple of Jacotot, 415 

— and International Copyright, 539 

— on women's ed., 98 

Payne, Dr. J. F., notes to Locke, 228, n. 
Payne, W. H., Science of Ed., 545 
Perez, B., on Jacotot, 438 
Perfect familiarity, 433 
Pestalozzian books, 383 
Pestalozzianism lies in aim, 354 
Pestalozzi's school at Neuhof, 296 

— talks with children at Stanz, 325 
Pestalozzi, a strange schoolmaster, 334 

— A portrait of, 345 

— and Bacon, 408 

— His poverty, 340 

— His severity, 308 
Petty's Battlefield simile, 207 

— Realism, 208 

Philanthropinum, Subjects taught at, 379 
Physical education for health, 104 

— Ed. neglected by Port-Royalists, 188 

— Ed., Rabelais for, 67 
Physician's defective science, 519 
Picture-book for History, Dr. Arnold, 48J 
Pictures for teaching, 476 

Piety at Port-Royal, 181 
Pinloche's Basedow mentioned, 289, », 525 
Plants and education, Rousseau, 253 
Plato against compulsion, 113 

— on literary instruction, 14 
Play andlearning different, 367 
Pleasant, Learning must be, 138 
Pleasurable, Exercise is, 464 
Pleasure in learning, Jesuits, 506 

— in learning. Ratke, 112 

— in sch. work. Sacchini, 52 

— in sch. work. Mulcaster, 98 

— in study at Port-Royal, 183, 194 
Poety, Memorizing, 483 ^ 
Pomey's Indiculus, 40 

Pope. /?«>«:/<«/ quoted, 31, 42a 

— on Locke and Montaigne, 230, n, 

— on "Nature," 109 

— quoted, 451, n. 

Pope's " Little Knowledge," 446 
Port-Royal des Champs and the Solitaiiej, 

"74 
Posture, Importance of, 337 



Potter 



INDEX. 



Ruskin 



565 



Poil.r, Miss J. D., quoted, si- 

Pouring-in theory, 507 

Practice does not make perfect, 189 

Preparatory Schools, 374 

Prendergast and language learning, 426, «. 

Pressure, Causes of, 77 

— Mulcaster against, 97 
Principles of the Innovators, 104 

— H. Spencer's summing up, 454 
Printing, Effect of, 10 

-^ spread literature at Renascence, 9 
Private prayer, 502 
Prize-giving in Jesuit schools, 58 
Prodromus of Comenius, 125, 126 
Prussia adopts Pestalozzianisra, 346 
Prussian edict against Froebel, 395 
Psychologizing instruction, 338 
Public education must imitate domestic, 
Pestalozzi, 321 

— schools, 513, ft. 

— schools Comm., quoted, 531 

— school freedom, 265 

— schools leave boys to themselves, 177 

— schools undermastered, 514, «. 
Punishments for moral offences only. 

Comenius, 139 

— in Jesuit schools, 48 

— Pestalozzi on, 327 
Pupil teachers, 377, «. 
Quadrivium preferred by Rabelais, 65 
Queen Louisa on Pestalozzi, 346 
Questioning, art of, 428, ft, 

— Rousseau, on art of, 266 
Questions by pupils at Port-Royal, igo 
Quidlibei ex auolibei, 423 
Quintilian on rudiments, 195, » 
Rabelais for intuition, 508 

— His detachment, 63 

— on Curriculum, 67, n. 
Racine and Port-Royal, 187 
Ramsauerand Pestalozzi, 336 

" Rapid impressionists," 89, 426, M. 

" Ratich," 105 

Ratio Studd, Soc. Jesu, 34, note 

Ratke and Ascham, 117 

Ratke's promises, 105 

Raumer on Comenius, 146 

Reaction in 17th century against books, 510 

Reading after study of things. Petty, 209 

— badly taught, 115, n. 

— tegun with Mother - tongue at Port- 
Royal, 183 



Reading in elementary schools, 257, n. 

— Jacotot's plan for, 435 

— Rousseau against, 256 

— silent and vocal, 482 
Realism, Birth of, 198 

— Comenius for, 149 

— Rabelais, 66 

Rearing otTspring, to be taught, 447 
Reason, Locke's dependence en, 331 

— No education bi-fore, 242 
Reforttiation 0/ Schools, 125 
Reformers, Attitude towards, 396 
Reimarus and Basedow, 273 
Rejected Addresses, quoted, 503 
Relative value of Knowledges, 443 
Religion and Science, 147 

" Religion" lessons in Germany, 501 
Religious and moral Training, 359 
Religious instruction, 500 
Renan, quoted, 247, n. 
Renascence defects. See Table of Co» 
tents 

— gave a new bend to ideas, 2 

— re-awakening to beauty in lit., 5 

— settled Curriculum, 4 
Repetitio, 45 

Restlessness, The Child's, 406 
" Retainers," 8g 

— 426, «. 

Reverence to be taught, 503 
Richelieu and Saint-Cyran, 174 
Richter, J. P, on nurse's influence, 373, "». 
Ritter, Karl, on Pestalozzi, 347 
Robertson, a methodiser, 426, n. 

— Croome, on inherited Knowledge, 364 
n. 

Rollin's Traiti des Etudes, 192 

Rooper, T. G. , A Pot of Green Feathers, 

S4S- 
Rousseau against schoolroom lore, 363 

— first shook off Renascence, 246 

— His proposals, 267 

— His two dogs, 312 

— His great influence, 240, 290 

— on Common Knowledge, 458, fs. 

— studied by all, 248 
Rousseauism, 516 
Rousseau's work, 520 
Routine work a refuge, 498 
Rudiments not to be made repulsive, 194 
Rules, Hoole about, 202 

Ruskin on things and words, iSQ, »• 



566 



Russell 



INDEX, 



Teacher 



Russell, John, translator of Guimps, 317 
Sacchini quoted, 39, 41, 46, 47 
Saint-Cyran and Port-Royal, 174 
Sainte-Beuve on Port-Royal, 195 
Salzmann, 287, 289 
Saros-Patak. Comenius at, 13a 
Savoir far cceur, &c., 74, n, 
Scheppler, Louise, 408 
Schmid, Josef, goes to Yverdun, 349 
Schmid, J. A., on Jesuits, 34 
Schuepfenthal, School at, 2S9 
Schola ntatcmi gremiiy 142 
Scholemaster, When published, 81 
School-hours of Jesuits short, 43 
Schoolmaster and words, 538 

— his test of knowledge, 22a 

— in Education, 177 

— art led to Verbalism, 30 
School means difi'erent things, $ . 
Schoolroom rubbish, 252 
Schuppius, in spem, &c., 432 

Science of Education dates from Comenius, 
512 

— of Education denied by Lowe, 379 
•— of Education growing, 505 

— of education. Importance of, 456 

— of -ducation like medicine, 519 

— of Education, Mulcaster for, 94 

— of education, only begmning. H. 
Spencer, 455 

— the thoujjht of God, 4x3 
Scientific foundation for Method, -jia 

— knowledge nuw valued, 77 
Scioppius edits /a«<Ka; 161, it. 

' Scratch pairs," 530 

Seeley, J. R., on iaagu^igo teaching, 4i5o 

— on use of tougue, iia. a 
Self-activity, 401 

— the main thing, 524 
Self-development, H. Spencer lot, 46a 
Self-education, Locke for, 236 
Self-preservation, EduCc^ticn for 4 ,3 
Self-teaching : Jacotet, 415 

Seneca for knowing few things, iOS 

— on learning through parts, 54'^ 
Sense, Art learnt by. Dury, 206 
Senses, Everj'thing through, Rousseau, 

859 

— Error of neglecting, 151 

— first, Comenius, 138 

— Hoole about, 20 

— How to cultivate. Rousseni;, 261 



Senses, Insufficiency of, 152 

— Learning from. Comenius, 149 

— Rousseau on training, 257, 258 

— Teach by the. Nicole, 191 

— Training of the. Mulcaster, 95, n. 
Sequences of nature arranged by mao, 5.4 
Severity, Wolsey against, 81, «. 
Shakespeare and Mulcaster, 91 

— " No profit grows, &c.," 473 

— quoted, 17 

Shaw and Donnell : School Devices, 544 
ShirreflF, Miss, a Froebelian, 413, n. 
Sides, Good of, 532 
Sidgwick, A. ; Lectures on Stimulus and 

Discipline, 544 
Simple to complex, 456 
Singing, 368 

Skyle sees Comenius, 128 
Small schools worse than large, 179 
Societas Professa of Jesuits, 36 
Sociology, 449 

Sonnenschein's parallel Grammars, 114 «. 
" Soul instead of salt," Ben Jonson, 498, «. 
Spartan Ed. preferred by Montaigne, 72 
S.P.C. K. pictures, 476, «. 
^^Spectator's C. in easy chair," quoted, 527 
Spelling, 483 

— Jacotot's plan for, 436 
Spencer, H., Conclusions about, 45* 

— his " Economy of nature," 235 
Stanford Rivers, Mulcaster at, 102, n. 
Stanz, Pestalozzi at, 316, 318,^ 

— The French at, 315 
Starting-points of the Sciences, Comenius, 

144 
Stephen, Sir J., quoted, 434 
Stonyhurst College, by Hewitson, 59 
Street for Mediaeval art, 5 
Study depends on will, 193 
Sturmius. See Table of Contents 
Stylists, 26 
Sugar needed, 466 
Sunrise can't be hastentd, 191 
Superintendence, the educator's funrticn, 

357 
Sweetmeats, Locke against, 466 
Swiss Journal, Pestalozzi, 309 
Talleyrand, on methods, 82 
Teach, Everyone can, Jacotot, 417 

— Meaning of word, 417 
Teacher a gardener, 512 

— Can he write on Education ? 439 



Teacher 



INDEX. 



Wordsworth 



567 



Teacher docs not begin at beginning, 468 

Teachers, Books for, 541 

Teachers, College for. Mulcaster, 100 

— Harm of overworking, 497 

— ignorant of principles, 455 

— must be trained, 412 

— Old, overdo repetition, 506 

— Young, neglect repetition, 506 
I'earher's business, 272 

— personality, Force of, Forum, quoted, 
380 

Peaching, causing to learn, 417 

— gained from pupils, 497 

— Good, escapes common tests, 19a 

— needs good spirits, 497 
Telemaque, 423 

" Telling," H. Spencer against, 463 
Theorists, Use of, 383 
Things before words, 104 

— Children's delight in. Petty, 310 
"Things" in educ.ition, 521 
Things, Rabelais for, 65 
Threefold life, Comenius, 135 • 
Thring. Theory and Practice of Teaching., 

542 
Tillich's bricks, 480, ». 
Tithonus, Quotation frem Tennyson s, 518, 

n. 
Tobler, 341 

Tone of school and big boys, 500 
Tout est en tout, 423 
Tradition, loss and gain from, 518 

— needed, 182 

Trainer better than teacher, 422 
Training of teachers, Mulcaster, 99 

— of teachers needed, 520 
Transcription, Hint for, 429, n. 
Translating both ways, 86 
Translations at Port-Royal, 185 

— discouraged at Renascence, 8 

— would be literature, 15 
Travelers, Tales of , 490 

Trench, Archbishop, on 13th century 

art- 5 
Trumbull, H. K. Teaching and Teaciut s, 

542 
Ifivium and Quadrivium, a 

— like squirrel's revolving cage, 10 
Tyndall on teaching, 468, «. 
Uniformity, Raikc for, 114 
Unity, Froebels desire for, 398 

— of Universe, Froebel, 3S9 



Universities excluded Baconian teaching, 

5" 
University men in middle class educaticn, 

472 
Unum necessarium, quoted, 133 
Upton, Editor oi Schokmaster, 8a 
Useful knowledge, 540 
Usual contrasted with natural, 516 
Utilitarianism defined, 235 
Variations, Prendergastian. 42S, ft, 
Vater, Dr., at Leipzig, 477 
Ventilabrum Sapientiae, 133. 
Verbal Realism, 25 

— Rabelais, 65 

Verbalism, Milton acrainst, 213, 214 

" Visibles" used for Realien, 70, f-. 

Vive la destr7iction, i 

Vogel, Dr., at Leipzig, 478 

Vogel, A., on Comenius, 156 

"Ward, James, on Kindergarten, 410 

Weighing for arithmetic, 480 

Welldon, J. E. C., on schools for young 

boys, 499, «. 
Well-educated, Wlien, 525 
Widgery, W. H., quoted, go 
Wilderspin and Infant Schools, 409 
Will, learning depends on. Jacotct, 41^ 

— needed for study, 193 
Wilson, H. B., on Mulcaster, 102 
Wilson, J. M., against " telling," 422 

— on training, 422 
Winchester, " Standing up," 541 
Winship, A. E., on intei^class matches, 531 
"Wisdom cried of old," &c., 77 
Wisdom in " the general," 517, n. 

— must be our own, Montaigne, 73 
Wolf, F. A., for self-teaching, 268 

— on child-collectors, 429, n. 
Wolf, Hiero., quoted, 31 
Wolsey, 80 

Women Commissioners, 308 
Women's education, 98, 412 

— education, Comenius, 141 

— interest in education, 106 
Wooding, W., on numbering, 479, 480, t. 
Words and Things, 538 

Words, Learning irom, 364, n, 

— studying, 154 

— taught without meaning, 467 

" Words," Various meanings of, 538 
Wordsworth on action of man, 516 

— on childrenls games, fjyj 



568 



Wordsworth 



INDEX. 



Yverdun 



Wordsworth, on jeneral truths, 496 

— on need of pleasure, 473, 1. 

— quoted, 20 

— Taste in books changes, 543 

— on tendcTcy, 516 

•— oa unity of man, 518, n. 



Wordsworth " We live by aduiiralion 

&c.," 154 
Working-schools, Locke's, zii, n. 
Worship connected with instruction, 50 1 
Writing, Jacotot's pUn for, 435 
Yverdun, I'estalozzi goes to, 34,5 



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